We consider the properties of perfectly discriminating contests in which players’ abilities are stochastic, but become common knowledge before efforts are expended. Players whose expected ability is lower than that of their rivals may still earn a positive expected payoff from participating in...

As a selling mechanism, auctions have acquired a central position in the free market economy all over the globe. This development has deepened, broadened, and expanded the theory of auctions in new directions. This chapter is intended as a selective update of some of the developments and...

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

This paper reports the results of experiments designed to test the theory of the optimal composition of prizes in contests. We find that while in the aggregate the behavior of our subjects is consistent with that predicted by the theory, such aggregate results mask an unexpected compositional...

In many contests a subset of contestants is granted preferential treatment which is presumably intended to be advantageous. Examples include affirmative action and biased procurement policies. In this paper, however, I show that some of the supposed beneficiaries may in fact become worse off...

We study all-pay auctions (or wars of attrition), where the highest bidder wins an object, but all bidders pay their bids. We consider such auctions when two bidders alternate in raising their bids and where all aspects of the auction are common knowledge including bidders' valuations. We...