{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2024,5,24]],"date-time":"2024-05-24T03:40:22Z","timestamp":1716522022371},"reference-count":16,"publisher":"World Scientific Pub Co Pte Ltd","issue":"03","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Int. Game Theory Rev."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2014,9]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>The compensation received by economic agents reflects their performance. Usually compensation reflects performance measured cardinally, but sometimes ordinal considerations play a role. It is well established that rewards \u2014 cardinal or ordinal \u2014 can rationally motivate contestants to put forth increased effort. We ask whether rewards, and in particular their cardinal or ordinal nature, can affect agents' strategies. Specifically, if level of effort is fixed and degree of difficulty is the only choice, what strategy is optimal? For example, in a high-jump competition, level of effort is not a meaningful variable; what is of interest is the choice of strategy \u2014 the height attempted, or degree of difficulty. We study how optimal strategies reflect reward structure, assuming that rewards may depend on level of difficulty, and go only to successful candidates, or only to candidates who succeed at more difficult tasks. Basing our conclusions in part on simple probabilistic models in which optimal choices can be determined analytically, we show how the structure of competitive rewards alters contestants' rational choices. We adopt a contest-design framework: What combinations of fixed and variable prizes cause contestants to select degrees of difficulty that maximize the contest designer's expected payoff? Our general conclusion is that competition can affect strategic choices, in magnitudes and even directions that are difficult to predict.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1142\/s0219198914500029","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2014,2,10]],"date-time":"2014-02-10T04:05:57Z","timestamp":1392005157000},"page":"1450002","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY AS THE OBJECTIVE OF CONTEST DESIGN"],"prefix":"10.1142","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"YIGAL","family":"GERCHAK","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Industrial Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 2069978, Israel"}]},{"given":"D. MARC","family":"KILGOUR","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mathematics, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3C5, Canada"}]}],"member":"219","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2014,5,6]]},"reference":[{"key":"rf1","first-page":"141","volume":"6","author":"Arziel O.","journal-title":"Int. J. Oper. Res."},{"key":"rf2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/BF01211819"},{"key":"rf4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1007\/b137817","volume-title":"Economics of Accounting: Performance Evaluation","author":"Christensen P. O.","year":"2005"},{"key":"rf5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1086\/648318"},{"key":"rf6","unstructured":"A. T.\u00a0Coughlan, Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science\u00a05 (1993)\u00a0pp. 611\u2013651."},{"key":"rf8","first-page":"170","volume":"3","author":"Glicksberg I. L.","journal-title":"Proc. Am. Math. Soc."},{"key":"rf9","first-page":"116","volume":"56","author":"Gonik J.","journal-title":"Harvard Bus. Rev."},{"key":"rf10","first-page":"349","volume":"3","author":"Green J. R.","journal-title":"J. Polit. Econ."},{"key":"rf11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1287\/opre.40.1.76"},{"key":"rf12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/S0899-8256(02)00538-9"},{"key":"rf13","first-page":"109","volume":"1","author":"Kilgour D. M.","journal-title":"Decis. Anal."},{"key":"rf14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1086\/261010"},{"key":"rf15","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.2307\/3003535"},{"key":"rf16","volume-title":"An Introduction to Game Theory","author":"Osborne M. J.","year":"2004"},{"key":"rf17","first-page":"643","volume":"34","author":"Prendergast C.","journal-title":"J. Econ. 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