We characterize revenue maximizing head starts for all-pay auctions and lottery contests with many heterogeneous players. We show that under optimal head starts all-pay auctions revenue-dominate lottery contests for any degree of heterogeneity among players. Moreover, all-pay auctions with...

Laboratory market experiments observe a sharp dichotomy between (selfish) competitive behavior and fair-minded social behavior depending on competitive conditions. While the dichotomy is consistent with social preference theory, the often advanced hypothesis that social behavior is an artifact...

In second price internet auctions with a fixed end time, such as those on eBay, many bidders 'snipe', i.e., they submit their bids in the closing minutes or seconds of an auction. Late bids of this sort are much less frequent in auctions that are automatically extended if a bid is submitted very...