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...

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

We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of equilibria with only two active players in the all-pay auction with complete information and identity-dependent externalities. This condition shows that the generic equilibrium of the standard all-pay auction is robust to the...

The present note analyzes the Simultaneous Ascending Bid Auction with arbitrarily many bidders with decreasing marginal valuations under complete information. We show that the game is solvable by iterated elimination of weakly dominated strategies if the efficient allocation assigns at least one...

This paper presents a unified framework for characterizing symmetric equilibrium in simultaneous move, two-player, rank-order contests with complete information, in which each player's strategy generates direct or indirect affine spillover effects that depend on the rank-order of her decision...

We study the equilibrium of the all-pay auction with complete information and a reserve price, and compare it with that of standard auctions. The seller should set a reserve price even when she faces incomplete information. In the latter setting, ex-ante asymmetry among bidders appears necessary...

We consider second-price and first-price auctions in the symmetric independent private values framework. We modify the standard model by the assumption that the bidders have reference-based utility, where a publicly announced reserve price has some influence on the reference point. It turns out...

This paper studies the evolutionary stability of the unique Nash equilibrium of a first price sealed bid auction. It is shown that the Nash equilibrium is not asymptotically stable under payoff monotonic dynamics for arbitrary initial popu- lations. In contrast, when the initial population...

We study auction design when parties cannot commit themselves to the mechanism. The seller may change the rules of the game and the buyers choose their outside option at all stages. We assume that the seller has a leading role in equilibrium selection at any stage of the game. Stationary...

The importance of auction theory has gained increased recognition in the scientific community, the latest recognition being the award of the Nobel price to Vickrey and Mirrlees. Auction theory has been used in quite different fields, both theoretically and empirically. This paper connects recent...