Tournaments with a Standard

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Drugov, Mikhail, Ryvkin, Dmitry, Zhang, Jun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Drugov, Mikhail
Ryvkin, Dmitry
Zhang, Jun
author_facet Drugov, Mikhail
Ryvkin, Dmitry
Zhang, Jun
contents We study tournaments where winning a rank-dependent prize requires passing a minimum performance standard. We show that, for any prize allocation, the optimal standard is always at a mode of performance that is weakly higher than the global mode and identify a necessary and sufficient condition for it to be at the global mode. When the prize scheme can be designed as well, the winner-take-all prize scheme is optimal for noise distributions with an increasing failure rate; and awarding equal prizes to all qualifying agents is optimal for noise distributions with a decreasing failure rate. For distributions with monotone likelihood ratios -- log-concave and log-convex, respectively -- these pay schemes are also optimal in a larger class of anonymous, monotone contracts that may depend on cardinal performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_01139
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tournaments with a Standard
Drugov, Mikhail
Ryvkin, Dmitry
Zhang, Jun
Theoretical Economics
We study tournaments where winning a rank-dependent prize requires passing a minimum performance standard. We show that, for any prize allocation, the optimal standard is always at a mode of performance that is weakly higher than the global mode and identify a necessary and sufficient condition for it to be at the global mode. When the prize scheme can be designed as well, the winner-take-all prize scheme is optimal for noise distributions with an increasing failure rate; and awarding equal prizes to all qualifying agents is optimal for noise distributions with a decreasing failure rate. For distributions with monotone likelihood ratios -- log-concave and log-convex, respectively -- these pay schemes are also optimal in a larger class of anonymous, monotone contracts that may depend on cardinal performance.
title Tournaments with a Standard
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.01139