Disclosure policy in a multi-prize all-pay auction with stochastic abilities

This paper investigates whether a contest organizer should disclose private information about bidders’ abilities in a multi-prize all-pay auction. Bidders’ abilities are randomly distributed and observed by the contest organizer; the organizer decides whether to disclose this information publicly. We find that concealing the information elicits higher expected total effort, regardless of the distribution of abilities. In addition, we find that the rent-dissipation rate of the contest does not depend on the disclosure policy.