We analyze optimal trading mechanisms in environments where each trader owns some units of a good to be traded and may be either a seller or a buyer, depending on the realization of privately observed valuations. First, the concept of virtual valuation is extended to ex ante unidentified...

In this paper, we propose a design for an an economically efficient, optimized, centralized, multi-lateral, periodic commodity market that addresses explicitly three issues: (i) substantial transportation costs between sellers and buyers; (ii) non homogeneous, in quality and nature, commodities;...

Our objective in this paper is to illustrate and better understand the unavoidable arbitrage between incentives and flexibility in contexts of asymmetric information and to characterize the general features of an appropriate response to this challenge. We show that procedures and institutions in...

This paper presents the theory of sequential auctions when participants desire more than one unit. The theoretical predictions are compared to experimental data. We estimate structural models which presume that participants' bids are drawn from some stochastic processes. The observed behavior...

In a general framework with independent private values of the bidders, we propose a game, with a simple economic interpretation, that allows implementing the optimal auction outcome when the seller ignores the distributions of the different bidders' valuations. In this robust or detail-free...

In this paper, we first review in this paper some general principles and fundamental facts and issues which remain at the heart of the movement towards deregulation, restructuring and privatization in network industries in general and in the electricity industry in particular. We then proceed...

Within the independent private-values paradigm, we derive the equilibrium implications of purposeful bidding behaviour at single-unit, first-price, sealed-bid auctions when discrete increments are imposed on bidding. While equilibrium purposeful behaviour with discrete bid increments is...