Your Failure is My Opportunity - Eff ects of Elimination in Contests

In this paper, we consider a sequence of multi-prize all-pay auctions, where the contestants who exert the lowest e fforts in a round are eliminated. We analyze if and how the behavior of contestants is influenced by the possibility that strong rivals are eliminated along the way. The conditions under which behavior is not influenced are rather restrictive. For cases where these conditions are not met, we derive equilibria in a two-period model. We compare our equilibrium predictions to those of a static model and a two-stage contest where the sequential structure is not announced in the first round.