TY  - JOUR
TI  - The Optimal Allocation of Prizes in Contests
AU  - Moldovanu, Benny
AU  - Sela, Aner
PY  - 2001
PB  - American Economic Association
LA  - eng
AB  - We study a contest with multiple, nonidentical prizes. Participants are privately informed about a parameter (ability) affecting their costs of effort. The contestant with the highest effort wins the first prize, the contestant with the second-highest effort wins the second prize, and so on until all the prizes are allocated. The contest's designer maximizes expected effort. When cost functions are linear or concave in effort, it is optimal to allocate the entire prize sum to a single "first" prize. When cost functions are convex, several positive prizes may be optimal. (JEL D44, J31, D72, D82)
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.91.3.542
DO  - 10.1257/aer.91.3.542
T2  - American economic review
VL  - 91
IS  - 3
SN  - 1944-7981
SN  - 0002-8282
SP  - 542-558
UR  - https://pollux-fid.de/r/cr-10.1257/aer.91.3.542
H1  - Pollux (Fachinformationsdienst Politikwissenschaft)
ER  -