Sabotage in Contests

Résumé du livre

A contest is a situation in which individuals expend resources in order to win valuable prize(s). 'Sabotage' is a deliberate, and often costly and illegal, act of damaging a rival's likelihood of winning the contest. It is done by exerting resources to negatively influence the effectiveness of a rival's efforts, or by increasing the rival's cost of effort, or by denying the rival access to resources. Sabotage can be observed in sports, war, promotional tournaments, political or marketing campaigns etc. In this article, we review the economics literature analyzing the act of sabotage in contests. We introduce a general structure and discuss the theories and evidence highlighting why sabotage occurs, the effects of sabotage on individual players and on overall welfare, and possible mechanisms to reduce the act of sabotage. We conclude by pointing out certain areas of future research.