We compare the most common methods for selling a company or other asset when participation is costly: a simple simultaneous auction, and a sequential process in which potential buyers decide in turn whether to enter the bidding. The sequential process is always more efficient. But preemptive...

The author suggests a new model of demand for variety that explains why competing firms may choose very similar product lines: if firms offer different product ranges, some consumers use multiple suppliers to increase variety and, since these consumers' purchases will be sensitive to the...

Which is the more profitable way to sell a company: an auction with no reserve price or an optimally structured negotiation with one less bidder? The authors show, under reasonable assumptions, that the auction is always preferable when bidders' signals are independent. For affiliated signals,...

The authors 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 instantaneously, even though each firm's value is private information to itself. In a 'standard setting' context, in which every competitor suffers...