Contest Theory: Incentive Mechanisms and Ranking Methods
Cambridge University Press, 2/4/2016
EAN 9781107033139, ISBN10: 1107033136
Hardcover, 730 pages, 25.3 x 17.7 x 4.2 cm
Language: English
Contests are prevalent in many areas, including sports, rent seeking, patent races, innovation inducement, labor markets, scientific projects, crowdsourcing and other online services, and allocation of computer system resources. This book provides unified, comprehensive coverage of contest theory as developed in economics, computer science, and statistics, with a focus on online services applications, allowing professionals, researchers and students to learn about the underlying theoretical principles and to test them in practice. The book sets contest design in a game-theoretic framework that can be used to model a wide-range of problems and efficiency measures such as total and individual output and social welfare, and offers insight into how the structure of prizes relates to desired contest design objectives. Methods for rating the skills and ranking of players are presented, as are proportional allocation and similar allocation mechanisms, simultaneous contests, sharing utility of productive activities, sequential contests, and tournaments.
1. Introduction and preview
2. Standard all-pay contests
3. Rank order allocation of prizes
4. Smooth allocation of prizes
5. Simultaneous contests
6. Utility sharing and social welfare
7. Sequential contests
8. Tournaments
9. Rating systems
10. Ranking methods
11. Appendices.