A seller wishes to sell an object to one of multiple bidders. The valuations of the bidders are privately known. We consider the joint design problem in which the seller can decide the accuracy by which bidders learn their valuation and to whom to sell at what price. We establish that optimal...

We experimentally test overconfidence in investment decisions by offering participants the possibility to substitute their own for alternative investment choices. Overall, 149 subjects participated in two experiments, one with just one risky asset, the other with two risky assets. Overconfidence...

The appearance of a Brownian term in the price dynamics on a stock market was interpreted in [De Meyer, Moussa-Saley (2003)] as a consequence of the informational asymmetries between agents. To take benefit of their private information without revealing it to fast, the informed agents have to...

We show that if limit orders are required to vary smoothly, then strategic (Nash) equilibria of the double auction mechanism yield competitive (Walras) allocations. It is not necessary to have competitors on any side of any market: smooth trading is a substitute for price wars. In particular,...

We investigate firms' incentives for cost reduction in the first price sealed bid auction, a format largely used for procurement. A central feature of the model is that we allow firms to be heterogeneous. Though private value first price auctions are not games with monotonic best responses, we...

The Babylonian bridal auction, described by Herodotus, is regarded as one of the earliest uses of an auction in history. Yet, to our knowledge, the literature lacks a formal equilibrium analysis of this auction. We provide such an analysis for the two-player case with complete and incomplete...

We propose a semi-cooperative game theoretic approach to check whether a given coalition is stable in a Bayesian game with independent private values. The ex ante expected utilities of coalitions, at an incentive compatible (noncooperative) coalitional equilibrium, describe a (cooperative)...

We consider parametric examples of two-bidder private value auctions in which each bidder observes her own private valuation as well as noisy signals about her opponentÌs private valuation. In such multidimensional private value auction environments, we show that the revenue equivalence between...

A Bayesian supply function equilibrium is characterized in a market where firms have private information about their uncertain costs. It is found that with supply function competition, and in contrast to Bayesian Cournot competition, competitiveness is affected by the parameters of the...

We study a winner-take-all R&D race where firms are privately informed about the uncertain arrival rate of the invention. Due to the interdependent-value nature of the problem, the equilibrium displays a strong herding effect that distinguishes our framework from war-of-attrition models....