Dynamic Team Contests with Complementary Efforts

Abstract

In this paper, we study dynamic team contests. In the framework of a Tullock contest between two teams generating impacts according to the Cobb-Douglas effort aggregation function, we examine how equilibrium efforts and winning probabilities depend on the timing of the actions. We show that in contrast to synchronous contests, asynchronous contests with publicly observable actions do not result in the same equilibrium outcome as the one-stage contest; they are strategically unbalancing, leading to more lopsided contests. The results have implications about the design of team contests with complementary efforts.