Fatter or fitter? On rewarding and training in a contest
研究了在异质性参与者竞争的背景下，委托人如何在技能提升培训与竞赛奖金之间分配固定预算，以最大化参与者的努力水平，并分析了预算规模对权衡关系的影响。
Abstract Competition between heterogeneous participants leads to low‐effort provision in contests. A principal can divide her fixed budget between skill‐enhancing training and the contest prize. Training can reduce heterogeneity, increasing effort. It also reduces the contest prize, making effort fall. We set up an incomplete‐information contest with heterogeneous players and show how this trade‐off is related to the size of the budget of an effort‐maximizing principal. A selection problem arises implying a cost associated with a win by the inferior player. The principal has a larger incentive to train the laggard, reducing the prize on offer.