Reverse contests

We study two forms of a reverse contest. In reverse contest A the designer imposes a punishment such that the agent with the highest effort who caused the greatest damage is punished. Conversely, in reverse contest B, the designer awards a prize to the agent with the lowest effort who caused the smallest damage. We analyze the behavior of the agents in both contest forms and demonstrate that asymmetry of the players' payoff functions does not necessarily yield different expected payoffs.