The process of allocating rights to resources can be viewed as a contest: parties compete with each other for the right to claim a larger allocation. In some situations, the amount of the resource that is available to allocate may be unknown when parties are competing for shares and perhaps not realized until contestants actually attempt to claim their shares of the resource. For example, fishing quotas may be awarded based on estimated fish populations, but if there are fewer fish than anticipated, those who are last to harvest may not be able to fill their quota. We model contests of this form and test the predictions of the model using a controlled laboratory experiment. The general result, supported by both theory and experimental data, is that participants compete less intensively for shares of the resource when uncertainty regarding the size of the prize is resolved later in the process.

分配资源权利的过程可以看作是一场竞赛：各方为要求更大分配的权利而相互竞争。在某些情况下，当各方在争夺股份时，可分配的资源量可能是未知的，并且可能直到参与者实际尝试申领其资源份额时才意识到。例如，可以根据估计的鱼类数量来授予捕捞配额，但是如果鱼类少于预期数量，则最后收获的鱼类可能无法满足其配额要求。我们对这种形式的竞赛进行建模，并使用受控实验室实验测试模型的预测。总体结果在理论和实验数据的支持下，