scholarly journals Performance‐maximizing large contests

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wojciech Olszewski ◽  
Ron Siegel

Many sales, sports, and research contests are put in place to maximize contestants' performance. We investigate and provide a complete characterization of the prize structures that achieve this objective in settings with many contestants. The contestants may be ex ante asymmetric in their abilities and prize valuations, and there may be complete or incomplete information about these parameters. The prize valuations and performance costs may be linear, concave, or convex. A main novel takeaway is that awarding numerous different prizes whose values gradually decline with contestants' ranking is optimal in the typical case of contestants with convex performance costs and concave prize valuations. This suggests that many real‐world contests can be improved by increasing the number of prizes and making them more heterogeneous. The techniques we develop can also be used to formulate and solve other contest design questions that have so far proven intractable.

Author(s):  
Bradley J Larsen

Abstract This study empirically quantifies the efficiency of a real-world bargaining game with two-sided incomplete information. Myerson and Satterthwaite (1983) and Williams (1987) derived the theoretical ex-ante efficient frontier for bilateral trade under two-sided uncertainty and demonstrated that it falls short of ex-post efficiency, but little is known about how well bargaining performs in practice. Using about 265,000 sequences of a game of alternating-offer bargaining following an ascending auction in the wholesale used-car industry, this study estimates (or bounds) distributions of buyer and seller values and evaluates where realized bargaining outcomes lie relative to efficient outcomes. Results demonstrate that the ex-ante and ex-post efficient outcomes are close to one another, but that the real bargaining falls short of both, suggesting that the bargaining is indeed inefficient but that this inefficiency is not solely due to the information constraints highlighted in Myerson and Satterthwaite (1983). Quantitatively, findings indicate that over one-half of failed negotiations are cases where gains from trade exist, leading an efficiency loss of 12–23% of the available gains from trade.


1982 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Kumar ◽  
C. W. Bert

Abstract Unidirectional cord-rubber specimens in the form of tensile coupons and sandwich beams were used. Using specimens with the cords oriented at 0°, 45°, and 90° to the loading direction and appropriate data reduction, we were able to obtain complete characterization for the in-plane stress-strain response of single-ply, unidirectional cord-rubber composites. All strains were measured by means of liquid mercury strain gages, for which the nonlinear strain response characteristic was obtained by calibration. Stress-strain data were obtained for the cases of both cord tension and cord compression. Materials investigated were aramid-rubber, polyester-rubber, and steel-rubber.


Author(s):  
G. Meneghesso ◽  
E. Zanoni ◽  
P. Colombo ◽  
M. Brambilla ◽  
R. Annunziata ◽  
...  

Abstract In this work, we present new results concerning electrostatic discharge (ESD) robustness of 0.6 μm CMOS structures. Devices have been tested according to both HBM and socketed CDM (sCDM) ESD test procedures. Test structures have been submitted to a complete characterization consisting in: 1) measurement of the tum-on time of the protection structures submitted to pulses with very fast rise times; 2) ESD stress test with the HBM and sCDM models; 3) failure analysis based on emission microscopy (EMMI) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM).


2019 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 10008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bat-el Friedman ◽  
Atanu Rajak ◽  
Emanuele G. Dalla Torre

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 1763-1773
Author(s):  
Meziane Aider ◽  
Lamia Aoudia ◽  
Mourad Baïou ◽  
A. Ridha Mahjoub ◽  
Viet Hung Nguyen

Let G = (V, E) be an undirected graph where the edges in E have non-negative weights. A star in G is either a single node of G or a subgraph of G where all the edges share one common end-node. A star forest is a collection of vertex-disjoint stars in G. The weight of a star forest is the sum of the weights of its edges. This paper deals with the problem of finding a Maximum Weight Spanning Star Forest (MWSFP) in G. This problem is NP-hard but can be solved in polynomial time when G is a cactus [Nguyen, Discrete Math. Algorithms App. 7 (2015) 1550018]. In this paper, we present a polyhedral investigation of the MWSFP. More precisely, we study the facial structure of the star forest polytope, denoted by SFP(G), which is the convex hull of the incidence vectors of the star forests of G. First, we prove several basic properties of SFP(G) and propose an integer programming formulation for MWSFP. Then, we give a class of facet-defining inequalities, called M-tree inequalities, for SFP(G). We show that for the case when G is a tree, the M-tree and the nonnegativity inequalities give a complete characterization of SFP(G). Finally, based on the description of the dominating set polytope on cycles given by Bouchakour et al. [Eur. J. Combin. 29 (2008) 652–661], we give a complete linear description of SFP(G) when G is a cycle.


Author(s):  
Kathleen Kerrigan ◽  
Xuechen Wang ◽  
Benjamin Haaland ◽  
Blythe Adamson ◽  
Shiven Patel ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Li-Qun Chen ◽  
Shweta Chhajed ◽  
Tong Zhang ◽  
Joseph M. Collins ◽  
Qiuying Pang ◽  
...  

AbstractDuring the past two decades, glucosinolate (GLS) metabolic pathways have been under extensive studies because of the importance of the specialized metabolites in plant defense against herbivores and pathogens. The studies have led to a nearly complete characterization of biosynthetic genes in the reference plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Before methionine incorporation into the core structure of aliphatic GLS, it undergoes chain-elongation through an iterative three-step process recruited from leucine biosynthesis. Although enzymes catalyzing each step of the reaction have been characterized, the regulatory mode is largely unknown. In this study, using three independent approaches, yeast two-hybrid (Y2H), coimmunoprecipitation (Co-IP) and bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC), we uncovered the presence of protein complexes consisting of isopropylmalate isomerase (IPMI) and isopropylmalate dehydrogenase (IPMDH). In addition, simultaneous decreases in both IPMI and IPMDH activities in a leuc:ipmdh1 double mutants resulted in aggregated changes of GLS profiles compared to either leuc or ipmdh1 single mutants. Although the biological importance of the formation of IPMI and IPMDH protein complexes has not been documented in any organisms, these complexes may represent a new regulatory mechanism of substrate channeling in GLS and/or leucine biosynthesis. Since genes encoding the two enzymes are widely distributed in eukaryotic and prokaryotic genomes, such complexes may have universal significance in the regulation of leucine biosynthesis.


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