Suchergebnisse

Reports on rise of private military companies in the 1990s; use by governments and international business enterprises, and potential role as peacekeeping forces. Whether private-sector military personnel are mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, or "dogs of war", role of companies including Executive Outcomes (EO) of South Africa, Sandline International and Defence Systems Limited of Great Britain, and Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) of the US.

We study ex post outsourcing of production in an imperfectly discriminating contest, interpreted here as a research tournament or a procurement contest for being awarded some production contract. We find that the possibility of outsourcing increases competition between the contestants, leading to higher total contest effort, if the contest winner is expected to obtain a sufficiently large share of ex post outsourcing rents. Under reasonable assumptions, outsourcing tends also to increase the number of active contestants, strengthening the case for outsourcing to increase total contest effort. If such effort is socially wasteful, outsourcing creates a welfare trade-off between ex ante and ex post efficiency. Adapted from the source document.