We study all-pay auctions with variable rewards under incomplete information. In standard models, a reward depends on a bidder!s privately known type; however, in our model it is also a function of his bid. We show that in such models there is a potential for paradoxical behavior where a...

We study two-stage political contests with private entry costs. We show that these political contests could be ineffective, namely, the chance of low ability candidates participating in the contest might be higher than the chance of high ability candidates participating in the contest (and...

We study all-pay contests under incomplete information where the reward is a function of the contestant's type and effort. We analyse the optimal reward for the designer when the reward is either multiplicatively separable or additively separable in effort and type. In the multiplicatively...