We analyze the doping behavior of heterogeneous athletes in an environment of private information. In a n-player strategic game, modeled as an all-pay auction, each athlete has private information about his actual physical ability and choses the amount of performance-enhancing drugs. The use of...

We analyse how the market design influences the bidding behaviour in multi-unit auctions, such as wholesale electricity markets. It is shown that competition improves for increased market transparency and we identify circumstances where the auctioneer prefers uniform to discriminatory pricing....

The objects for sale in most auctions possess both private and common value elements. This salient feature has not yet been incorporated into a strategic analysis of equilibrium bidding behaviour. This paper reports such an analysis for a stylised model in which bidders receive a private value...

We characterize revenue maximizing mechanisms in a common value environment where the value of the object is equal to the highest of bidders' independent signals. The optimal mechanism exhibits either neutral selection, wherein the object is randomly allocated at a price that all bidders are...

Second price allpay auctions (wars of attritions) have an evolutionarily stable equilibrium in pure strategies if valuations are private information. I show that for any level of uncertainty there exists a pure deviation strategy close to the equilibrium strategy such that for some valuations...

Potential bidders respond to a seller's choice of auction mechanism for a common-value or affiliated-values asset by endogenous decisions whether to incur an information-acquisition cost (and observe a private estimate), or forgo competing. Privately informed participants decide whether to incur...

We study an in.nitely-repeated .rst-price auction with common values. Initially, bid-ders receive independent private signals about the objects. value, which itself does not change over time. Learning occurs only through observation of the bids. Under one-sided incomplete information, this...

In Buy-It-Now auctions, sellers can post a take-it-or-leave-it price offer prior to an auction. While the literature almost exclusively looks at buyers in such combined mechanisms, the current paper summarizes results from the sellers' point of view. Buy-It-Now auctions are complex mechanisms...

We analyse an endogenous prize all-pay auction under complete information where it is possible that none of the bidders wins and the winning payoff becomes non-monotonic in own bid. We derive the conditions for the existence of pure strategy equilibria and fully characterize the unique mixed...

This paper examines the effects of disclosing the actual number of bidders in contests with endogenous stochastic entry. I study a standard all-pay auction in which bidders' valuations are commonly known but their participation decisions private. Each potential bidder has to incur an entry cost...