Related papers: Contest success functions with(out) headstarts
We consider contests with a large set (continuum) of participants and axiomatize contest success functions that arise when performance is composed of both effort and a random element, and when winners are those whose performance exceeds a…
The purpose of this note is to prove the existence of a randomized mechanism, a social decision scheme (SDS), with desirable fairness, efficiency, and strategyproofness properties unmatched by all known SDSs. In particular, we disprove a…
We consider contest success functions (CSFs) that extract contestants' prize values. In the common-value case, there exists a CSF extractive in any equilibrium. In the observable-private-value case, there exists a CSF extractive in some…
We study $n$-dimensional contests between two players with heterogeneous effort costs, where each dimension (battle) is modeled as a Tullock contest. Prize-allocation rules are identity-independent, budget-balanced, and weakly increasing in…
Within the framework of Game Theory, contests study decision-making in those situations or conflicts when rewards depend on the relative rank between contenders rather than their absolute performance. By relying on the formalism of Tullock…
In high-stake domains such as healthcare and hiring, the role of machine learning (ML) in decision-making raises significant fairness concerns. This work focuses on Counterfactual Fairness (CF), which posits that an ML model's outcome on…
Choice functions constitute a simple, direct and very general mathematical framework for modelling choice under uncertainty. In particular, they are able to represent the set-valued choices that typically arise from applying decision rules…
Given the final ranking of a competition, how should the total prize endowment be allocated among the competitors? We study consistent prize allocation rules satisfying elementary solidarity and fairness principles. In particular, we…
We study tournaments where winning a rank-dependent prize requires passing a minimum performance standard. We show that, for any prize allocation, the optimal standard is always at a mode of performance that is weakly higher than the global…
In a model of interconnected conflicts on a network, we compare the equilibrium effort profiles and payoffs under two scenarios: uniform effort (UE) in which each contestant is restricted to exert the same effort across all the battles she…
Incentive mechanisms for crowdsourcing have been extensively studied under the framework of all-pay auctions. Along a distinct line, this paper proposes to use Tullock contests as an alternative tool to design incentive mechanisms for…
Ensuring fairness in machine learning predictions is a critical challenge, especially when models are deployed in sensitive domains such as credit scoring, healthcare, and criminal justice. While many fairness interventions rely on data…
In forecasting competitions, the traditional mechanism scores the predictions of each contestant against the outcome of each event, and the contestant with the highest total score wins. While it is well-known that this traditional mechanism…
We consider a stochastic matching model with a general compatibility graph, as introduced in \cite{MaiMoy16}. We prove that most common matching policies (including FCFM, priorities and random) satisfy a particular sub-additive property,…
In rank aggregation, the goal is to combine multiple input rankings into a single output ranking. In this paper, we analyze rank aggregation methods, so-called social welfare functions (SWFs), with respect to strategyproofness, which…
Suppose you and your friend both do $n$ tosses of an unfair coin with probability of heads equal to $\alpha$. What is the behavior of the probability that you obtain at least $d$ more heads than your friend if you make $r$ additional…
This paper introduces a contest-theoretic simplified model of triathlon as a sequential two-stage game. In Stage 1 (post-swim), participants decide whether to continue or withdraw from the contest, thereby generating an endogenous…
Tournaments are frequently used incentive mechanisms to enhance performance. In this paper, we use field data and show that skill disparities among contestants asymmetrically affect the performance of contestants. Skill disparities have…
Tullock contests model real-life scenarios that range from competition among proof-of-work blockchain miners to rent-seeking and lobbying activities. We show that continuous-time best-response dynamics in Tullock contests with convex costs…
Standard uniform convergence results bound the generalization gap of the expected loss over a hypothesis class. The emergence of risk-sensitive learning requires generalization guarantees for functionals of the loss distribution beyond the…