Centralized vs decentralized contests

• We compare decentralized and centralized contests.
• The contest is described by the Contest Success Function of Beviá–Corchón (2015).
• Total effort in both contests depends on a parameter that represents competition.
• Payoffs are not monotonic with the size of the contest.

We compare two contests, decentralized in which there are several independent contests with non overlapping contestants and centralized in which all contestants fight for a unique prize which is the sum of all prizes in the small contests. We study the relationship between payoffs and efforts between these two contests.