After the close of an auction, the winning bidder may find that he is unable to carry out his bid offer. This paper seeks to determine what measures the seller should take to maximize his share of the surplus when bidders are privately informed about their risk of default. Special attention is...

We consider a model of oligopolistic firms that have private information about their cost structure. Prior to competing in the market a competitive advantage, i.e., a cost reducing technology, is allocated to a subset of the firms by means of a multi-object auction. After the auction either all...

We examine a simple model of collusion under a single-object second-price auction. Under the appropriate parameter conditions, in particular as long as collusion is neither too easy, nor too difficult, we find that the optimal policy involves both an effective ceiling, as well as a reserve price.

In November 2001, a TV program showed that many large Dutch construction companies participated in price fixing. We analyze how one such company, Heijmans, reacted to the reputation crises after the TV program by introducing a code of conduct. We present the outcomes of a questionnaire survey...

In many markets, empirical evidence suggests that positive production cost shocks are transmitted more quickly and fully to final prices than negative ones. This article explains asymmetric price adjustment caused by firms imperfectly colluding on supra-competitive price levels. While positive...