Information disclosure in sequential (and simultaneous) contests

We study a two-player contest with one-sided incomplete information: One player’s valuation is publicly known and the other’s is his private information. The designer chooses the players’ move sequence (between simultaneous and sequential contests) and the information disclosure policy (between full and no disclosure). We find that if the uninformed player’s valuation is low, a simultaneous (resp. strong-lead sequential) contest with full disclosure is optimal when the valuation difference is large (resp. small); if the uninformed player’s valuation is high, a strong-lead sequential contest with full (resp. no) disclosure is optimal when the valuation difference is large (resp. small).