The All-pay Auction When a Committee Awards the Prize.

The equilibrium of the all-day auction when the prize is awarded by two or more people has not been characterized. In this case, I conjecture that there is no equilibrium in mixed strategies and in pure strategies if there are no caps on the bids of the contestants. I then consider an all-pay auction under committee administration with caps on the bids of the contenstants. I find pure and mixed strategy equilibria for some given values of the cap. The main contribution of this paper is to show that there exists equlibria in the all-pay auction under committee administration if caps are placed on the bids of contestants.