Contests

Historically, fan scholars have focused on conducting deep dives into singular cases and revealing trends by comparing cross sections of those cases. While there is undeniable value in conducting close analyses of such instances, the reliance on this method can limit our assessment of long-running trends. By supplementing—or, more productively, combining—specific case studies with diachronic perspectives, we can better situate, contextualize, and trace emerging trends like the evolution of fan/producer dynamics. To model this approach, I analyze 4 years' worth of fan-targeted promotional campaigns on the official Teen Wolf (2011–) Tumblr. The activities—fannish and/or promotional—of all participants in a shared ecological system like Tumblr are significant. They continuously construct, deconstruct, nuance, and challenge the ever-evolving context of fandom and fan/producer dynamics. Supplementing a close analysis of one of Teen Wolf's recent promotional campaigns—the commissioned #TeenWolfExhibit—with a diachronic perspective addresses the ever-evolving ecology of media fandom and traces the evolution of MTV's fannish literacy from 2011 to 2015. The #TeenWolfExhibit reproduces and reflects all the promotional successes, failures, and course corrections that predate it.

We study experimentally the effects of cost structure and prize allocation rules on the performance of rent-seeking contests. Most previous studies use a lottery prize rule and linear cost, and find both overdissipation relative to Nash equilibrium prediction and significant variation in individual subject efforts. In a 2 2 design, we investigate the effects of sharing the prize proportionally and

Abstract: We use a Tullock-type contest model to show that intuitively and structurally different contests can be strategically and revenue equivalent to each other. We consider a two-player contest, where outcome-contingent payoffs are linear functions of prizes, own effort, and the effort of the rival. We identify strategically equivalent contests that generate the same family of best response functions and, as a result, the same revenue. However, two strategically equivalent contests may yield different equilibrium payoffs. Finally, we ...

ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH :
Plutarch reports that Cato the Younger, under Marcus Favonius' aedileship, presented artists with leaves wreaths and very simple gifts, after having organised spectacles in Rome. In analysing in minute detail this text, but also the transmission of the anecdote, my purpose in writing the present paper is to explain these ceremony's distinctive features in underlining the complexity of Cato's character and his belonging to both Roman and Greek cultural background.
---------------------------------------- RÉSUMÉ EN FRANÇAIS : Plutarque rapporte que Caton le Jeune, sous l'édilité de Marcus Favonius, remit des couronnes de feuillage et des cadeaux d'une grande simplicité à des artistes, à la suite de spectacles organisés à Rome. Analysant minutieusement ce texte, mais aussi la transmission de l'anecdote, le présent article cherche à expliquer les particularités de cette cérémonie en soulignant la complexité du personnage de Caton et son appartenance à des milieux culturels à la fois grecs et romains.

Crowdsourcing contests are contests by which organizations tap into the wisdom of crowds by outsourcing tasks to large groups of people on the Internet. In an online environment often characterized by anonymity and lack of trust, there are inherent uncertainties for participants of such contests. This study focuses on crowdsourcing contests with winner-take-all prizes. During these contests, submissions are made sequentially and contest hosts can provide public in-process feedback to the submissions as soon as they are received. Drawing on the uncertainty literature, we examine how the use of prize guarantees (guaranteeing that a winner will be picked and paid) and in-process feedback (numeric ratings to individual designs and public textual comments during the contest) can help reduce the various uncertainties faced by the contestant, thereby attracting more submissions. We find that guaranteeing the prize increases submissions. The volume of in-process feedback (both numeric reviews and textual comments) has a positive effect on the number of submissions, and such an effect is bigger in contests without prize guarantees. In addition, providing highly positive or extremely negative feedback discourage overall future submissions, and the negative effect of highly positive feedback is mitigated in guaranteed contests.

Promotion for Deli Express a company that makes, distributes, and sells fresh sandwiches and hand-held food products that can be heated using the C-Store microwave oven, that are sold primarily in Convenience Stores in the rural United States. The primary consumer are adult men 18-51.

This article examines behavior in the two-player, constant-sum Colonel Blotto game with asymmetric resources in which players maximize the expected number of battlefields won. The experimental results support the main qualitative predictions of the theory. In the auction treatment, where winning a battlefield is deterministic, disadvantaged players use a “guerilla warfare” strategy that stochastically allocates zero resources to a subset of battlefields. Advantaged players employ a “stochastic complete coverage” strategy, allocating random, but positive, resource levels across the battlefields. In the lottery treatment, where winning a battlefield is probabilistic, both players divide their resources equally across all battlefields. However, we also find interesting behavioral deviations from the theory and discuss their implications.

The paper introduces the possibility of coalition government into the theoretical study of political accountability and analyzes the accountability of coalitions as a problem of team production. It is shown that coalition governments can be held accountable in the presence of an electoral alternative. Accountability becomes problematic if it is certain that at least one of the coalition parties stays in power after the elections. Such a coalition (sometimes called a ‘unity government’) can not be given appropriate collective incentives. To incentivate government performance, voters make one coalition party responsible for the outcome. This, however, makes the other coalition party interested in sabotage. The paper analyzes the resulting conflict and characterizes optimal voter strategy.

We find the sufficient conditions for the existence of multiple equilibria in Tullock-type contests, and show that asymmetric equilibria arise even under symmetric prize and cost structures. We then present existing contests where multiple equilibria exist under reasonably weak conditions.► Sufficient conditions are found for the existence of multiple equilibria in Tullock contests. ► Asymmetric equilibria arise even under symmetric prize and cost structures. ► Examples of existing contests where multiple equilibria exist are given.

Using a two-player Tullock-type contest, we show that intuitively and structurally different contests can be strategically equivalent. Strategically equivalent contests generate the same best response functions and, as a result, the same equilibrium efforts. However, strategically equivalent contests may yield different equilibrium payoffs. We propose a simple two-step procedure to identify strategically equivalent contests. Using this procedure, we identify contests that are strategically equivalent to the original Tullock contest, and provide new examples of strategically equivalent contests. Finally, we discuss possible contest design applications and avenues for future theoretical and empirical research.

At the beginning of Plato's Symposium, Eryximachus introduces a contest for the best encomium to Eros, making the rest of the dialogue a remarkable competition. We consider the seven speeches of the Symposium a kind of competitive game with proper rules, winners, and possibly losers. However, the dialogue provides neither explicit rules of the game, nor criteria to estimate the performance of the competitors. Therefore, to determine them, the following steps are taken. Firstly, the contestants' speeches are analysed to reveal their views on the best kind of speech and to determine the difficulties they face, and which they are ready to overcome in order to win. Secondly, each encomium's structure is examined to discover that all of them have the same composition of an introductory refutation of the previous speaker, the ensuing exposition of the initial theses of the speech, and their explication within a set of proper arguments. Thirdly, the sequence of encomia is discussed bearing in mind the difficulties relating to changing their order. Fourthly, the arguments of all speeches are assembled in a joined list. Finally, each speech is rated according to all the relevant criteria, and a final rating of all seven encomia is given. This rating accords with minor details of the dialogue, which may possibly have a metaphorical sense. The position of the top three encomia corresponds to the special place occupied by Socrates', Agathon's, and Aristophanes' speeches mentioned in major current studies of the Symposium.

Reverse auctions are considered a fast and inexpensive price discovery tool to award procurement contracts and it is often desirable to award contracts to more than one supplier. We propose a new procurement procedure that is based on a reverse auction. Shares are allocated endogenously, depending on the suppliers’ bids. The procedure obtains dual sourcing by assigning positive shares to the two most competitive bids and uses discarded bids to endogeneize the reserve price. In equilibrium the two most competitive suppliers are awarded contracts. Surprisingly, when discarded suppliers are competitive enough, the procedure not only allows taking advantage of dual sourcing but also generates lower procurement expenditures than a standard auction for sole sourcing. We also show that providers reveal their costs truthfully and that the procurement procedure can be used in different scenarios concerning what providers know about each others’ costs, provided the assumption of private values holds.

We compare two contests, decentralized in which there are several independent contests with non overlapping contestants and centralized in which all contestants fight for a unique prize which is the sum of all prizes in the small contests. We study the relationship between payoffs and efforts between these two contests.