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arXiv · 2605.26639

Suppression and Empowerment in Contests

Alexander Matros·Constantine Sorokin
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Abstract

We study a tractable two-player contest built on a truncated cubic contest success function. Its defining feature is a strategic-feedback parameter whose sign determines whether a leading player's effort lowers (suppression) or raises (empowerment) the marginal effectiveness of the trailing player's effort; standard lottery contests impose suppression by construction. The benchmark yields closed-form mixed equilibria under complete information and a unique affine Bayesian Nash equilibrium under IID private information. Expected effort is typically single-peaked in the feedback parameter. Uncertainty lowers effort under suppression but raises it under empowerment, and the same asymmetry governs information disclosure: an effort-maximizing designer withholds information under suppression and discloses fully under empowerment. Several familiar conclusions of contest theory turn out to reflect suppressive benchmarks rather than contests as such.

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Alexander Matros, Constantine Sorokin. 2026-05-26. Suppression and Empowerment in Contests. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.26639

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