From the regulation of sports to lawmaking in parliament, in many situations one group of people (“agents”) make decisions that affect the payoffs of others (“principals”) who may offer action-contingent transfers in order to sway the agents' decisions. Prat and Rustichini (2003)...

We study, theoretically and experimentally, sealed-bid first-price auctions with and without package bidding. In the model, a global bidder bids for multiple items and can benefit from synergies, while local bidders bid for a single item. In the equilibrium, package bidding improves (hurts)...

We investigate a private value auction in which a single “entrant” on winning imposes a negative externality on two “regular” bidders. In an English auction when all bidders are active, “regular” bidders free ride, exiting before price reaches their values. In a first-price...

In an experiment using two-bidder first-price sealed-bid auctions with symmetric independent private values and 400 participants, we collected information on the female participantsʼ menstrual cycles and the use of hormonal contraceptives. We find that naturally cycling women bid significantly...

Auctions are often used to sell idiosyncratic goods difficult for potential bidders to value ex ante. Laboratory auctions with uncertainty over final values in this experiment resulted in 18% and 27% of bids above the expected value of the item in private-value first-price and English auctions,...

This article explores the effect of a subset of symmetric bidders joining to bid together. Possible applications include mergers, collusion and joint-bidding arrangements. The change produces a “strong” party with a more advantageous value distribution than the remaining “weak”...

This paper shows how to maximize revenue when a contest is noisy. We consider a case where two or more contestants bid for a prize in a stochastic contest where all bidders value the prize equally. We show that, whenever a Tullock contest yields under-dissipation, the auctioneerʼs revenue can...

We investigate gender differences and menstrual cycle effects in first-price and second-price sealed-bid auctions with independent private values in a laboratory setting. We find that women bid significantly higher and earn significantly less than men do in the first-price auction, while we find...

We study multi-object auctions in the presence of post-auction trade opportunities among bidders who have either single- or multi-object demand. We focus on two formats: Vickrey auctions where package bidding is possible and simultaneous second-price auctions. We show that, under...

The lack of price guidance towards efficiency relevant packages in ascending combinatorial clock auctions (ACCA) can lead to a low-efficiency allocation of goods. We propose a descending price combinatorial clock auction (DCCA) with a newly devised pricing strategy to improve on this problem....