I analyze the optimal favoritism in a complete-information all-pay contest with two players, whose costs of effort are weakly convex. The contest designer could favor or harm some contestants using one of two instruments: head starts and handicaps. I find that any given player’s effort distribution is ranked in the sense of first-order stochastic dominance according to how (ex post) symmetric the players are in terms of competitiveness. Consequently, as long as the designer values effort from both contestants, “leveling the playing field” is optimal regardless of which instrument is used.

中文翻译：

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论全薪竞赛中的最优偏袒

我分析了两个玩家的完全信息全薪竞赛中的最优偏好，他们的努力成本是弱凸的。比赛设计者可以使用以下两种手段之一来偏袒或伤害某些参赛者：先发制人和障碍。我发现任何给定球员的努力分布都是根据球员在竞争力方面的（事后）对称性在一级随机优势的意义上排名的。因此，只要设计师重视两位参赛者的努力，无论使用哪种乐器，“公平竞争”都是最佳选择。