TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Epstein, Gil S.
AU  - Mealem, Yosef
AU  - Nitzan, Shmuel
        TI  - Lotteries vs. All-Pay Auctions in Fair and Biased Contests
        PY  - 2012/Nov/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 7032
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp7032
        AB  - The form of contests for a single fixed prize can be determined by a designer who maximizes the contestants' efforts. This paper establishes that, under common knowledge of the two asymmetric contestants' prize valuations, a fair Tullock-type endogenously determined lottery is always superior to an all-pay-auction; it yields larger expected efforts (revenues) for the contest designer. If the contest can be unfair (structural discrimination is allowed), then the designer's payoff under the optimal lottery is equal to his expected payoff under the optimal all-pay auction.
        KW  - endogenous lottery
KW  - discrimination
KW  - efforts (revenue) maximization
KW  - contest design
KW  - all-pay auction
        ER  -