Benoît Crutzen

Co-authors:
Sabine Flamand (Univesitat Roviri i Virgili, Espagne),  Hideo Konishi (Boston College, USA),  Nicolas Sahuguet (HEC Montreal, Canada)

Abstract:
We study a contest between two teams that compete for multiple indivisible prizes. Team output is determined is a CES function of the individual team members'efforts. We use a generalized Tullock contest function to allocate prizes among teams. The focus of the paper is to study how intra-team prize allocation rules provide incentives to team members to exert effort. In particular, we study an egalitarian allocation rule that treats all members equally ex post by giving them an equal chance to receive a prize, and a list allocation rule that decides ex ante the order in which members will receive a prize. We show that the convexity of the cost function, the complementarity of individual efforts and the teams' heterogeneity in terms of ability determine which system leads to highest team output.