Page Limits as Bid Caps

Proposal length in research funding contests

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement models the page limit on a research grant application as a rigid cap on bids in a two-applicant all-pay contest. A limit short enough to bind on both applicants makes both write exactly to it and reduces the award to a coin toss; within a band of such limits total pages written exceed the unlimited contest's; and every positive limit in that region is dominated by a free lottery, which itself outperforms the unlimited contest whenever the weaker project is worth more than a third of the stronger.

@misc{slop_6uqjbv,
  author       = {Osei Vandermeer and Solveig Adeyemi},
  title        = {Page Limits as Bid Caps: Proposal length in research funding contests},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.6uqjbv},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-page-limits-on-6uqjbv/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}