Optimal contests with incomplete information and convex effort costs
研究了在代理人拥有私人信息和凸努力成本、设计者有固定奖金预算时，如何设计最大化努力的机制。发现尽可能多的参与者总是最优，并给出了胜者全得结构最优的充要条件，否则应分配多个递减奖金。
I investigate the design of effort‐maximizing mechanisms when agents have both private information and convex effort costs, and the designer has a fixed prize budget. I first demonstrate that it is always optimal for the designer to utilize a contest with as many participants as possible. Further, I identify a necessary and sufficient condition for the winner‐takes‐all prize structure to be optimal. When this condition fails, the designer may prefer to award multiple prizes of descending sizes. I also provide a characterization of the optimal prize allocation rule for this case. Finally, I illustrate how the optimal prize distribution evolves as the contest size grows.