Contests Theory and Applications

Contest theory is an important part of game theory used to analyse different types of contests and conflicts. Traditional microeconomic models focus on situations where property rights are well defined, and agents voluntarily trade rights over goods or produce rights for new goods. However, much less focus has been given to other situations where agents do not trade property rights, but rather fight over them. Contests: Theory and Applications presents a state-of-the art discussion of the economics of contests from the perspective of both core theory and applications. It provides a new approach to standard topics in labour, education, welfare and development and introduces areas like voting, industrial organisation, mechanism design, sport, and military conflict. Using elementary mathematics, this book provides a versatile framework for navigating this growing area of study and serves as an essential resource for its wide variety of applications in economics and political science.

Preface; Part I. Foundations: 1. An Introduction to Contests; 2. Contest Success Functions (CSFs); 3. Equilibrium with Heterogeneous Agents; 4. Foundations for Contests Success Functions; Part II. Extensions: 5. Contests Between Groups; 6. Sabotage; 7. Dynamic Contests; 8. Asymmetric Information; Part III. Applications: 9. Contests in Other Environments: Draws, Large Contests and Entry; 10. Contests in Classical Problems: Divisionalizacion, Monopoly Welfare Losses, Coase Theorem, Voting; 11. Contests, Institutions, Wars and Economic Success; 12. Contests: Social Welfare and Public Policy; References; Index.

Luis Corchón is Emeritus Professor at Carlos III University. He is the author of Theories of Imperfectly Competitive Markets (1996) and The Theory of Implementation of Socially Optimal Decisions in Economics (1996) and co-editor of Handbook of Game Theory and Industrial Organization (2018). His work appeared in Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior, RAND, International Journal of Industrial Organization, and Economic Theory. He has served as associate editor for Journal of Public Economic Theory, Review of Economic Design, Mathematical Social Sciences and Journal of Dynamics and Games, and has advised 15 PhDs.
Carmen Beviá is Full Professor at Universidad de Alicante. Her work appeared in Journal of Economic Theory, Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior, RAND, International Journal of Industrial Organization, and Mathematical Social Sciences. She is co-editor of the volume The Political Economy of Democracy (2008). She has served as associate editor for Mathematical Social Sciences and advised 4 PhD students. She is currently a coeditor of Journal of Mathematical Economics.