Information disclosure on the contest mechanism

In this paper, we study how to disclose the precision of the winner selection mechanism (i.e., the contest success function) that determines how effective a player’s effort is in determining his/her winning probability. Specifically, we focus on the disclosure of the adopted discriminatory power r of the Tullock contest. The discriminatory power r is exogenously given, and the contest organizer knows more than contestants about the true state of r . We examine the optimal disclosure policy that maximizes the expected sum of contestants’ efforts. In addition to public disclosure, we study private disclosure over groups with independent signals. We establish the optimality of full disclosure/concealment.