In this paper, we examine the optimal mechanism design of selling an indivisible object to one regular buyer and one publicly known buyer, where inter-buyer resale cannot be prohibited. The resale market is modeled as a stochastic ultimatum bargaining game between the two buyers. We fully...

I show that a unique equilibrium exists in an asymmetric two-player all-pay auction with a discrete signal structure, correlated signals, and interdependent valuations. The proof is constructive, and the construction can be implemented as a computer program and be used to derive comparative...

This paper investigates the effect of corruption on competition in government procurement auctions. Our assumption is that the bureaucrat (i.e. the agent that administers the market), if corrupt, may provide a favour in exchange for a bribe. The favour we consider in most of our analysis is the...

Most markets clear through a sequence of sales rather than through a Walrasian auctioneer. Because buyers can decide whether to buy now or later, rather than only now or never, their current `willingness to pay' is much more sensitive to price than is the demand curve. In consequence, markets...

This paper revisits recent empirical research on buyer credulity in arts auctions and auctions for assets in general. We show that elementary results in auction theory can fully account for some stylized facts on asset returns that have been held to suggest that sellers of assets can exploit...

This paper provides an elementary, non-technical, survey of auction theory, by introducing and describing some of the critical papers in the subject. The most important of these are reproduced in a companion book, The Economic Theory of Auctions, Paul Klemperer (ed.), Edward Elgar (pub.),...

Which is the more profitable way to sell a company: a public auction or an optimally structured negotiation with a smaller number of bidders? We show that under standard assumptions the public auction is always preferable, even if it forfeits all the seller's negotiating power, including the...

Bidders' asymmetries are widespread in auction markets. Yet, their impact on behaviour and, ultimately, revenue and profits is still not well understood. In this Paper, I define a natural benchmark auction environment to compare any private value auction with asymmetrically distributed...

We analyse order placement strategies in a limit order market, using data on the order flow from the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Traders submitting market or limit orders trade off the order price against both the execution probability and the winner’s curse risk associated with different order...

The restructuring of a bankrupt company often entails a change of control. By efficiency of a bankruptcy procedure it is usually meant that the control is allocated into the hands of those who can maximize its value. In this paper we focus instead on how to allocate control with a procedure that...