Large contests without single crossing (Q2677728)

The article discusses an interesting upgrade of authors research (see [\textit{W. Olszewski} and \textit{R. Siegel}, Econometrica 84, No. 2, 835--854 (2016; Zbl 1419.91339)]). More precisely, the authors show that the equilibria of contests with many players and prizes are approximated by certain single-agent mechanisms. The basic result is contained in Theorem 1: Fix any metrization \(\rho\) of the weak-topology on \(X\times Y \times B\). For any \(\epsilon>0\), there is an \(N\) such that for all \(n\ge N\) and for any equilibrium of the \(n\)-th contest there is a tariff mechanism that implements a prize allocation such that \(\rho \left (D,D^n\right )<\epsilon\), where \(D\) is the outcome of the tariff mechanism and \(D^n\) is the average equilibrium outcome. When the approximating mechanism is unique, a stronger notion of approximation obtains.