And you might think: then just let everyone know exactly how many people have entered at any one time. But that turns it into a Malthusianism: people will gain no utility by entering the contest, because utility of entering the contest is a function of how many other people are in the contest, and if there were still utility to be gained, more people would enter the contest until that stopped being true.
In fairness, this is only true if expected utility is purely a function of the number of participants, as in the El Farol Bar game. Here you also need to consider your strength relative to the field: if you and I both see that 10 people have entered then you might see opportunity where I would not, because you’ve won two of these and I haven’t.
This is more helpful than it sounds at first, because this is really a two-stage game: first you sign up to write the paper, and then you actually write one. Entrants will decide whether to advance to the second stage by an assessment of their own strength relative to the field, which should tend to decrease as the field of entrants grows larger. People with low assessed EVs are thus discouraged from investing—exactly the result we want, so long as their assessments are accurate.
In fairness, this is only true if expected utility is purely a function of the number of participants, as in the El Farol Bar game. Here you also need to consider your strength relative to the field: if you and I both see that 10 people have entered then you might see opportunity where I would not, because you’ve won two of these and I haven’t.
This is more helpful than it sounds at first, because this is really a two-stage game: first you sign up to write the paper, and then you actually write one. Entrants will decide whether to advance to the second stage by an assessment of their own strength relative to the field, which should tend to decrease as the field of entrants grows larger. People with low assessed EVs are thus discouraged from investing—exactly the result we want, so long as their assessments are accurate.