The Role of Information Revelation in Elimination Contests

Abstract

In this article, we investigate how information revelation rules affect the existence and the efficiency of equilibria in two‐round elimination contests. We establish that no symmetric separating equilibrium exists under the full revelation rule and find that the non‐existence result is very robust. We then characterise a partially efficient separating equilibrium under the partial revelation rule when players’ valuations are uniformly distributed. We finally investigate the no revelation rule and find that it is both most efficient and optimal in maximising the total efforts from the contestants. Within our framework, more information revelation leads to less efficient outcomes.