This paper investigates the incentives that drive advantageous positions in sequential competitions. Sequential competitions have been shown to have either a first- or last-mover advantage. In contrast, this paper illustrates a general sequential-move competition where the first- and last-moving agents are the least profitable while the middle-moving agent is guaranteed to earn the highest possible payoff. This result provide for a new intuition about the underlying incentives in a sequential decision structure which are tested using a multiple-round laboratory experiment. Experimental data aggregated across all rounds support the prediction of a first- and last-mover disadvantage along with a middle-mover advantage. Furthermore, the data suggest that subjects learn as they gain experience with this competition. In this manner, a sequential decision structure with inexperienced agents will benefit the first- and middle-moving agents, whereas the same decision structure with experienced agents will only benefit the middle-moving agents.

本文研究了在顺序比赛中推动有利位置的动机。顺序比赛已被证明具有先发优势或后发优势。相比之下，本文说明了一般的顺序移动竞争，在这种情况下，先行和后继代理商的利润最低，而中途代理商则可确保获得最高的收益。该结果提供了有关使用多轮实验室实验测试的顺序决策结构中潜在激励因素的新直觉。在所有回合中汇总的实验数据支持对先行者和后者劣势以及中间者优势的预测。此外，数据表明，受试者在获得比赛经验时会学习。以这种方式，