In parallel contests, the contest organizer controls the entry of heterogeneous contestants by regulating access to the contests and determining the prize allocation across contests. The organizer can prevent a contestant from entering more than one contest. I show that the organizer allows entry to multiple contests and uniquely sets identical prizes across contests to maximize aggregate effort in all contests. Independent of the entry regulation, I find no sorting effects. Thus, a contest with a relatively high prize does not necessarily attract contestants with higher abilities. Furthermore, I discover interesting spillover effects of prizes between contests in the case of restricted entry regulations. For instance, the individual (aggregate) effort increases (decreases) in a contest if the prize in another contest increases. The endogeneity of contestants’ participation drives many of these results.

在并行竞赛中，竞赛组织者通过控制对竞赛的访问并确定跨竞赛的奖品分配来控制异类竞赛者的进入。组织者可以阻止参赛者参加多个竞赛。我证明了组织者允许参加多个竞赛，并在各个竞赛中唯一设置相同的奖品，以最大程度地提高所有竞赛的工作量。独立于进入规则，我发现没有排序效果。因此，具有相对较高奖赏的竞赛不一定吸引具有较高能力的竞赛者。此外，在限制参赛规则的情况下，我发现比赛之间奖品的有趣溢出效应。例如，如果另一个比赛的奖金增加，则个人（总计）的努力会增加（减少）。