Contests : Theory and Applications

First textbook on contests for advanced undergraduates and graduates in economics, social sciences, and applied mathematics. A new way to reconsider old economic problems - markets, voting, welfare, labour, economics and development - and study non-standard ones: sports, conflicts among groups, sabotage, war, and affirmative action among others.

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.