This paper examines a perfectly discriminating contest (all-pay auction) with two asymmetric players. Valuations are endogenous and depend on the effort each player invests in the contest. The shape of the valuation function is common knowledge and differs between the contestants. Some key...

Recent literature has shown that all-pay auctions raise more money for charity than winner-pay auctions. We demonstrate that the first-price and second-price winner-pay auctions outperform the first-price and second-price all-pay auction when bidders are sufficiently asymmetric. To prove it, we...