aDepartment of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA;bDepartment of Economics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, and Department of Justice, Washington, DC 20530, USA
Abstract:
We show that all-pay auctions dominate first-price sealed-bid auctions when bidders face budget constraints. This ranking is explained by the fact that budget constraints bind less frequently in the all-pay auctions, which leads to more aggressive bidding in that format.