We study dynamic tournaments in which time is modeled explicitly, as opposed to with the abstract notion of “periods.” By doing so, we characterize the effects of the ex ante designated timing of an interim progress report. Whether or not a policy of reporting increases total expected effort does not depend on the release time of the report; however, the magnitude of the effect does. We demonstrate that total expected effort is single peaked or single troughed in the report’s release time depending on parameters, with the peak/tough located at a time strictly more than halfway through the tournament. However, a policy of releasing information always harms the expected utility of the tournament’s participants. Implications for tournament design are discussed.

中文翻译：

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何时在动态竞赛中发布反馈

我们研究动态锦标赛，其中时间是明确建模的，而不是抽象的“时期”概念。通过这样做，我们可以表征临时进度报告的事前指定时间的影响。报告政策是否增加了预期的总工作量，并不取决于报告的发布时间；但是，效果的大小确实可以。我们证明，根据参数的不同，报告的总预期工作量在报告的发布时间中是一个高峰或一个低谷，高峰/艰难时刻恰好位于锦标赛中途的一半以上。但是，发布信息的政策始终会损害比赛参与者的预期效用。讨论了比赛设计的含义。