We evaluate the impact of three auction mechanisms – the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) mechanism, the second-price auction (SPA), and the random nth-price auction (NPA) – in the measurement of private willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept for a pure public good. Our results show...

We consider a setting in which two potential buyers, one with a prior toehold and one without, compete in a takeover modeled as an ascending auction with participating costs. The toeholder is more aggressive during the takeover process because she is also a seller of her own shares. The...

We consider an auction setting, in a symmetric information framework, in which bidders, even if they fail to obtain the good, care about the price paid by the winner. We prove that the outcome of the first-price auction is not affected by identity-independent price externalities, while the...

This paper analyzes how all-pay auctions with endogenous prizes can be used to provide effort incentives. We show that wide classes of effort distributions can be implemented as equilibrium outcomes of such games. We also ask how all-pay auctions have to be structured so as to induce high...

An auction is externality-robust if unilateral deviations from equilibrium leave the other bidders’ payoffs unaffected. The equilibrium and its outcome will then persist if certain types of externalities arise between bidders. One example are externalities due to spiteful preferences, which...

We study the impact of crossholdings on the efficiency of the standard auction formats. The ascending auction is not equivalent to the second-price auction. In a class of examples, the ascending auction is the only efficient standard auction format.

Nous considérons la vente aux enchères sous pli scellé au second prix d'un objet que chaque acquéreur potentiel évalue de manière « privée et indépendante ». Nous montrons que l'optimum ex ante d'un cartel, sous contraintes d'incitation et d'équilibre ex post des transferts, coïncide...

This paper analyzes two-stage rank-order tournaments. A principal decides (i) how to spread prize money across the two periods, (ii) how to weigh performance in the two periods when awarding the second-period prize, and (iii) whether to reveal performance after the … first period. The...