All-pay auctions with endogenous bid timing: an experimental study

Using a controlled laboratory experiment, we examine individuals’ bid timing decisions in complete information all-pay auctions and find that homogeneous bidders are more likely to enter the early bidding stage under a favor-early tie-breaking rule. Furthermore, revenue in an endogenous-entry treatment, in which both sequential and simultaneous all-pay auctions exist, is either lower than or equal to that in an exogenous-entry treatment with only simultaneous all-pay auctions. Additionally, in simultaneous all-pay auctions, individuals do not always employ a mixed strategy as predicted by the risk-neutral model. Instead, our data is better rationalized by a risk- and loss-aversion model.