We characterize the equilibrium of the all-pay auction with general convex cost of effort and sequential effort choices. We consider a set of n players who are arbitrarily partitioned into a group of players who choose their efforts "early"; and a group of players who choose "late". Only the...

firms compete in all-pay auctions with complete information, silent shareholdings introduce asymmetric externalities into the all-pay auction framework. If the strongest firm owns a large share in the second strongest firm, this may make the strongest firm abstain from bidding. As a consequence,...