The theory of contests looks at a number of competitions, from advertising to sports to war, in which any energy expended or money spent by the participants is unrecoverable regardless of the outcome. This book provides an introduction to the contest theory literature and describes the common properties and laws that govern these contests.
This book describes the theory structure underlying contests, in which players expend effort and/or spend money in trying to get ahead of one another. Uniquely, this effort is sunk and cannot be recovered, regardless of whether a player wins or loses in the competition. Such interactions include diverse phenomena such as marketing and advertising by firms, litigation, relative reward schemes in firms, political competition, patent races, sports, military combat, war and civil war. These have been studied in the field of contest theory both within these specific contexts and at a higher level of abstraction.
This book describes the theory structure underlying contests, in which players expend effort and/or spend money in trying to get ahead of one another. Uniquely, this effort is sunk and cannot be recovered, regardless of whether a player wins or loses in the competition. Such interactions include diverse phenomena such as marketing and advertising by firms, litigation, relative reward schemes in firms, political competition, patent races, sports, military combat, war and civil war. These have been studied in the field of contest theory both within these specific contexts and at a higher level of abstraction.







