The theory of contests looks at a number of competitions, from advertising to sports to war, in which any energy expended or money spent by the participants is unrecoverable regardless of the outcome. This text provides an introduction to the contest theory literature and describes the common properties and laws that govern these contests.

The theory of contests looks at a number of competitions, from advertising to sports to war, in which any energy expended or money spent by the participants is unrecoverable regardless of the outcome. This book provides an introduction to the contest theory literature and describes the common properties and laws that govern these contests.

Contests are an important aspect of the lives of diverse animals, from sea anemones competing for space on a rocky shore to fallow deer stags contending for access to females. Why do animals fight? What determines when fights stop and which contestant wins? Addressing fundamental questions on contest behaviour, this volume presents theoretical and empirical perspectives across a range of species. The historical development of contest research, the evolutionary theory of both dyadic and multiparty contests, and approaches to experimental design and data analysis are discussed in the first chapters. This is followed by reviews of research in key animal taxa, from the use of aerial displays and assessment rules in butterflies and the developmental biology of weapons in beetles, through to interstate warfare in humans. The final chapter considers future directions and applications of contest research, making this a comprehensive resource for both graduate students and researchers in the field.

Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.

Contests are prevalent in many areas, including sports, rent seeking, patent races, innovation inducement, labor markets, scientific projects, crowdsourcing and other online services, and allocation of computer system resources. This book provides unified, comprehensive coverage of contest theory as developed in economics, computer science, and statistics, with a focus on online services applications, allowing professionals, researchers and students to learn about the underlying theoretical principles and to test them in practice. The book sets contest design in a game-theoretic framework that can be used to model a wide-range of problems and efficiency measures such as total and individual output and social welfare, and offers insight into how the structure of prizes relates to desired contest design objectives. Methods for rating the skills and ranking of players are presented, as are proportional allocation and similar allocation mechanisms, simultaneous contests, sharing utility of productive activities, sequential contests, and tournaments.

This second volume of the Handbook includes original contribution by experts in the field. It provides up-to-date surveys of the most relevant applications of game theory to industrial organization. The book covers both classical as well as new IO topics such as mergers in markets with homogeneous and differentiated goods, leniency and coordinated effects in cartels and mergers, static and dynamic contests, consumer search and product safety, strategic delegation, platforms and network effects, auctions, environmental and resource economics, intellectual property, healthcare, corruption, experimental industrial organization and empirical models of R&D.