Effort complementarity and role assignments in group contests

Abstract

This study characterizes role assignments in maximizing a group's winning probability under the influence of the complementarity of group members' efforts in a group contest, in contrast to prize and multiple resource allocations. We use a constant elasticity of substitution effort aggregator function to parameterize the complementarity. While the prize and resource allocation rules depend on the complementarity, the assignment rule does not when multiple roles are assignable to a single group member: All roles are assigned only to the most productive group member. However, when only a single role per group member is assignable, the assignment rule depends on the complementarity: Roles from greater to less importance are assigned to group members in descending order of their productivity under strong complementarity; only the most important role is assigned to the most productive group member and the others have no effect under weak complementarity.