We model a war of attrition with N+K firms competing for N prizes. In a "natural oligopoly" context, the K-1 lowest-value firms drop out instantae- ously, even though each firm's value is private information to itself. In a "stan- dard setting" context, in which every competitor suffers losses until a standard is chosen, been after giving up on its own preferred alternative, each firm's exit time is independent both K and of other players' actions. Our results explain how long it takes to form a winning coalition in politics. Solving the model is facilitated by the Revenue Equivalence Theorem.
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