Perfectly discriminating contests (or all pay auction) are widely used as a model of situations where individuals … devote resources to win some prize. In reality such contests are often preceded by investments of the contestants into their … timing of investment are studied. With simultaneous investments, equilibria in which players play a pure strategy in the …

&D races, lobbying activity and sport contests are captured by this framework. After analyzing the unique mixed strategy …

We characterize the optimal structure of prizes in contests, when the contest designer is interested in the …-558) incomplete-information model of contests as well as other results in a particularly simple fashion. …

We study all-pay contests under incomplete information where the reward is a function of the contestant's type and …

We study all-pay contests in which there is a positive probability of a tied outcome. We analyse both one …-stage contests and multi-stage contests with tie-breaks. We demonstrate that in symmetric two-player contests, the designer does not … have an incentive to award a prize in a case of a tie. Consequently, in symmetric multi-stage two-player contests, the …

contests. We find that while in the aggregate the behavior of our subjects is consistent with that predicted by the theory …

and differs between the contestants. Some key properties of R&D races, lobbying activity and sport contests are captured …