Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/94168 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
SFB/TR 15 Discussion Paper No. 311
Publisher: 
Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio 15 - Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems (GESY), München
Abstract: 
We consider a variant of the Tullock rent-seeking contest. Under symmetric information we determine equilibrium strategies and prove their uniqueness. Then, we assume contestants to be privately informed about their costs of effort. We prove existence of a pure-strategy equilibrium and provide a sufficient condition for uniqueness. Comparing different informational settings we find that if players are uncertain about the costs of all players, aggregate effort is lower than under both private and complete information. Yet, under additional assumptions, rent dissipation is still smaller in the latter settings. Numerical examples illustrate that there is no general ranking between private and complete information. The results depend on the distribution costs are drawn from and on the exact specification of the contest success function.
Subjects: 
Rent-seeking
Contest
Asymmetric Information
Private values
JEL: 
D72
D74
D82
C72
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.