We study how budget constraints affect effort provision in sequential elimination tournaments. Our main result is that the introduction of budget constraints has two opposing effects on the initial effort of the unconstrained contestants, and leads to a non-monotonicity of this effort. This implies that if the budget asymmetry is not too large, total first-stage effort from unconstrained contestants is larger than in the case with unconstrained contestants only. We also provide evidence that total first-stage effort and total effort from unconstrained contestants might be larger in an asymmetric contest.

中文翻译：

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预算限制在连续淘汰赛中的作用*

我们研究了预算限制如何影响连续淘汰赛中的努力提供。我们的主要结果是预算约束的引入对不受约束的参赛者的初始努力有两个相反的影响，并导致该努力的非单调性。这意味着如果预算不对称不是太大，则不受约束的参赛者在第一阶段的总努力要大于只有不受约束的参赛者的情况。我们还提供证据表明，在不对称比赛中，不受约束的参赛者的总第一阶段努力和总努力可能更大。