Less fighting than expected—experiments with wars of attrition and all-pay auctions

Hannah Hörisch and Oliver Kirchkamp

While all-pay auctions are experimentally well researched, we do not have much laboratory evidence on wars of attrition. This paper tries to fill this gap. Technically, there are only few differences between wars of attrition and all-pay auctions. Behaviourally, however, we find striking differences: As many studies, our experiment finds overbidding in all-pay auctions. In contrast, in wars of attrition we observe systematic underbidding.

We study bids and expenditure in different experimental frames and matching procedures and tie in with the literature on stepwise linear bidding functions.

JEL classification C72, C92, D44, E62, H30

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• Supplementary material (instructions, list of sessions).
• Data, R-Code from the paper, z-Tree code (in export format): control questions, dynamic bids treatment, static bids treatment.

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• An earlier version appeared as a SFB 504 discussion paper 04-06 under the title “Why are Stabilisations delayed—an experiment with an application to all pay auctions”
• A more recent version is available as Jena Economic Research Paper 2008-023.
• The paper has been published as: Hannah Hörisch, Oliver Kirchkamp (2010), “Less fighting than expected—experiments with wars of attrition and all-pay auctions”, Public Choice, Vol. 144/1, pp. 347-.