Do Polls create Momentum in Political Competition?

__Abstract__ We explore how public opinion polls affect candidates' campaign spending in political competition. Generally, polls lead to (more) asymmetric behavior. Under a majority rule there always exists an equilibrium in which the initially more popular candidate invests more in the campaign and thereby increases her lead in expectation: polls create momentum. When campaigning is very effective and the race is very close, a second type of equilibrium may exist: the trailing candidate outspends and overtakes his opponent. Regardless of the type of equilibrium, polls have a tendency to decrease expected total campaigning expenditures by amplifying ex-ante asymmetries between candidates and thus defusing competition. When candidates care also for their vote share in addition to having the majority, candidates' incentives crucially depend on the distribution of voters' candidate preferences

On the Merits of Meritocracy

We study career choice when competition for promotion is a contest. A more meritocratic profession always succeeds in attracting the highest ability types, whereas a profession with superior promotion benefits attracts high types only if the hazard rate of the noise in performance evaluation is strictly increasing. Raising promotion opportunities produces no systematic effect on the talent distribution, while a higher base wage attracts talent only if total promotion opportunities are sufficiently plentifu

Performance and Relative Incentive Pay: The Role of Social Preferences

__Abstract__ Under relative performance pay, other-regarding workers internalize the negative externality they impose on other workers. In one form -increased own effort reduces others' payoffs- this results in other-regarding individuals depressing efforts. In another form punishment reduces the payoff of other workers- groups with other-regarding individuals feature higher efforts because it is more difficult for these individuals to sustain low-effort (collusive) outcomes. We explore these effects experimentally and find other-regarding workers tend to depress efforts by 15% on average. However, selfish workers are nearly three times more likely to lead workers to coordinate on minimal efforts when communication is possible. Hence, the social preferences composition of a team of workers has nuanced consequences on efforts

A Survey of Experimental Research on Contests, All-Pay Auctions and Tournaments

Many economic, political and social environments can be described as contests in which agents exert costly efforts while competing over the distribution of a scarce resource. These environments have been studied using Tullock contests, all-pay auctions and rankorder tournaments. This survey provides a review of experimental research on these three canonical contests. First, we review studies investigating the basic structure of contests, including the contest success function, number of players and prizes, spillovers and externalities, heterogeneity, and incomplete information. Second, we discuss dynamic contests and multi-battle contests. Then we review research on sabotage, feedback, bias, collusion, alliances, and contests between groups, as well as real-effort and field experiments. Finally, we discuss applications of contests to the study of legal systems, political competition, war, conflict avoidance, sales, and charities, and suggest directions for future research. (author's abstract