Competition between heterogeneous participants leads to low-effort provision in contests. A principal can divide her fixed budget between skill-enhancing training and the contest prize. Training can reduce heterogeneity, increasing effort. It also reduces the contest prize, making effort fall. We set up an incomplete-information contest with heterogeneous players and show how this trade-off is related to the size of the budget of an effort-maximizing principal. A selection problem arises implying a cost associated with a win by the inferior player. The principal has a larger incentive to train the laggard, reducing the prize on offer.

中文翻译：

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胖还是瘦？关于比赛中的奖励和训练

异质参与者之间的竞争导致竞赛中的低努力提供。校长可以将她的固定预算分配给技能提升培训和竞赛奖金。培训可以减少异质性，增加努力。它还减少了比赛奖金，使努力下降。我们与异类参与者建立了一个不完全信息竞赛，并展示了这种权衡与努力最大化委托人的预算大小之间的关系。选择问题的出现意味着与劣势玩家获胜相关的成本。校长有更大的激励来培训落后者，从而减少所提供的奖金。