Optimal tie-breaking rules

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Goel, Sumit, Goyal, Amit
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Goel, Sumit
Goyal, Amit
author_facet Goel, Sumit
Goyal, Amit
contents We consider two-player contests with the possibility of ties and study the effect of different tie-breaking rules on effort. For ratio-form and difference-form contests that admit pure-strategy Nash equilibrium, we find that the effort of both players is monotone decreasing in the probability that ties are broken in favor of the stronger player. Thus, the effort-maximizing tie-breaking rule commits to breaking ties in favor of the weaker agent. With symmetric agents, we find that the equilibrium is generally symmetric and independent of the tie-breaking rule. We also study the design of random tie-breaking rules that are ex-ante fair and identify sufficient conditions under which breaking ties before the contest actually leads to greater expected effort than the more commonly observed practice of breaking ties after the contest.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2304_13866
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimal tie-breaking rules
Goel, Sumit
Goyal, Amit
Theoretical Economics
We consider two-player contests with the possibility of ties and study the effect of different tie-breaking rules on effort. For ratio-form and difference-form contests that admit pure-strategy Nash equilibrium, we find that the effort of both players is monotone decreasing in the probability that ties are broken in favor of the stronger player. Thus, the effort-maximizing tie-breaking rule commits to breaking ties in favor of the weaker agent. With symmetric agents, we find that the equilibrium is generally symmetric and independent of the tie-breaking rule. We also study the design of random tie-breaking rules that are ex-ante fair and identify sufficient conditions under which breaking ties before the contest actually leads to greater expected effort than the more commonly observed practice of breaking ties after the contest.
title Optimal tie-breaking rules
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.13866