We conduct a field experiment in a large retail chain to test basic predictions of tournament theory regarding prize spread and noise. A random subset of the 208 stores participates in two-stage elimination tournaments. Tournaments differ in the distribution of prize money across winners of the...

This paper tests two hypotheses from the theory of elimination tournaments: (i) that uneven tournaments, where the contestants are ex ante heterogeneous, entail lower effort exertion; this is a prediction from agency theory that has not been tested empirically before; and (ii) whether incentives...

We conduct a natural field experiment in a large retail chain to test basic predictions of tournament theory regarding prize spread and noise. A random subset of the 208 stores participates in two-stage elimination tournaments. Tournaments differ in the distribution of prize money across winners...

We study all-pay auctions with budget-constrained bidders who have access to fair insurance before bidding simultaneously over a prize. We characterize a unique equilibrium for the special cases of two bidders and one prize, show existence and a heuristic for finding an equilibrium in the case...

If firms compete in all-pay auctions with complete information, silent shareholdings introduce asymmetric externalities into the allpay 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...

This paper considers incentives for information acquisition ahead of conflicts. We characterize the (unique) equilibrium of the all-pay auction between two players with one-sided asymmetric information. The type of one player is common knowledge. The type of the other player is drawn from a...

We study cheap-talk pre-play communication in the static all-pay auctions. For the case of two bidders, all correlated and communication equilibria are payoff equivalent to the Nash equilibrium if there is no reserve price, or if it is commonly known that one bidder has a strictly higher value....

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...

According to the so-called Exclusion Principle (introduced by Baye et alii, 1993), it might be profitable for the seller to reduce the number of (fullyinformed) potential bidders in an all-pay auction. We show that the Exclusion Principle does not apply if the seller regards the bidders' private...