How confidence heterogeneity shapes effort and performance in tournaments and contests

Abstract

This paper studies how heterogeneity in confidence biases affects players’ relative effort provision in tournaments and contests. We uncover a non-monotonic effect of confidence on equilibrium relative efforts and winning probabilities. A player with either a low or a high confidence exerts less effort than his rival at equilibrium. However, for intermediate confidence levels, the player exerts more effort than his rival.