Overbidding and heterogeneous behavior in contest experiments: a meta-comment on cross-cultural differences

We revisit the analyses by Sheremeta (2013) and Chowdhury and Moffatt (2017), who pool experimental data from 30 Tullock contests to explain the phenomenon of overbid- ding. The authors find that the overbidding rate is positively related to the number of contestants and has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the relative endowment. We reuse their data and extend the analysis in the direction of cross-cultural differ- ences, focusing on ethno-linguistic-religious fractionalization as a country-level measure. The results suggest an increased explanatory power of the model, with fractionalization negatively relating to overbidding. In addition, the extended model shows that in the one-shot game the overbidding rate is significantly higher than in the case of repeated interactions. We discuss possible interpretations of our findings.