We characterize the incentive compatible allocation that maximizes the expected social surplus in a single-unit sale when the efficient allocation is not implementable. This allocation may involve no selling when it is efficient to sell. We then show that the English auction always implements...

This paper studies the incentives of a bidder to acquire information in anauction when her information acquisition decision is observed by the otherbidders before they bid. Our results show that the sealed bid (second price)auction induces more information acquisition about a common component...

We examine demand behaviour for intertemporal dependencies, using Spanishpanel data. We present evidence that there is both state dependence and correlatedheterogeneity in demand behaviour. Our specific findings are that food outside thehome, alcohol and tobacco are habit forming whereas...

This paper provides some striking results that arise in the unique symmetric equilibrium of common value multiunit auction in which some bidders are better informed than others. We show that bidders with worse information can do surprisingly well: They can win with higher probability than better...

We introduce the serial contest by building on the desirable properties of two prominent contest games. This family of contest games relies both on relative efforts (as Tullock's proposal) and on absolute effort differences (as difference-form contests). An additional desirable feature is that...

We analyze (non-deterministic) contests with anonymous contest success functions. There is no restriction on the number of contestants or on their valuations for the prize. We provide intuitive and easily verifiable conditions for the existence of an equilibrium with properties similar to the...

Experimental and empirical evidence identifies the existence of socialpreferences and proposes competing models of such preferences. In this paper, wefurther examine one such social preference: conditional cooperation. We run threeexperimental public goods games, the traditional voluntary...