Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/163022 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
CeDEx Discussion Paper Series No. 2017-01
Publisher: 
The University of Nottingham, Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics (CeDEx), Nottingham
Abstract: 
This paper studies the effects of a specific affirmative action policy in complete information all-pay auctions when players differ in ability. We call this policy an extra prize. The contest organiser splits the prize of the competition into a main prize and an extra prize. Extra prizes differ from second prizes, because they are targeted towards disadvantaged (low-ability) agents. We consider a setting with one high-ability and two low-ability contestants and fully characterise equilibrium. Assuming that the contest organiser aims to maximise expected total effort, we show that (i) almost any extra prize is preferable to a standard all-pay auction without extra prize; (ii) the exclusion principle (Baye, Kovenock and de Vries, 1993) can be implemented by a wide range of sufficiently large extra prizes; and (iii) partial exclusion by means of an appropriately chosen extra prize benefits the organiser more than complete exclusion.
Subjects: 
asymmetric contests
multi-prize contests
equality of opportunity
affirmative action
discrimination
prize structure
exclusion principle
JEL: 
C72
D72
J78
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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