Differential treatment and the winner's effort in contests with incomplete information
研究了组织者以最大化获胜者期望努力为目标时，如何设计全支付竞赛。发现即使参赛者事前对称，最优竞赛也常涉及差别对待，并给出了估值均匀分布时的完整刻画。
We study the design of all-pay contests when the organizer's objective is to maximize the expected winner's effort and contestants have private information about their valuations for the prize. We identify sufficient conditions for every optimal contest to involve differential treatment of ex ante symmetric contestants. Moreover, we provide a complete characterization of optimal contests when valuations are uniformly distributed. Finally, our results for the winner's effort also imply that differential treatment is even more likely to benefit the organizer when her objective is to maximize the expected highest effort.