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...

In the equilibrium of the all-pay auction with two groups of individual players who move sequentially, only the player with the lowest effort cost has a positive payoff. This payoff and the overall dissipation crucially depend on group composition.