Most treasuries around the world sell their securities at auctions either directly or indirectly through an agent, usually the central bank. Although they can control both the rules and the timing of the auction, they may not be able to control the information and valuations of bidders. The...

Behavior in the first three years of auctions for Pakistani treasury bills is studied. Bidding strategies rapidly converged to a consistent pattern after the auctions started in 1991. Factors are identified that influenced the expected profitability of auction participation, which was on average...

A major effort is taking place in many parts of the world to establish market-oriented institutions, a development that is particularly evident in the context of the transforming economies in Eastern Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union. Against this background, this paper...

We review the main issues that arise in the design of treasury bill auctions and survey the relevant empirical literature. We also provide a detailed description of the actual design of these auctions in a sample of 42 industrial and developing countries

This paper evaluates the importance of auction format on bidding behavior and seller revenue, focusing on differences in performance under uniform-price and discriminatory-price formats. The analysis is based on a standard benchmark model from which empirically-testable hypotheses are derived on...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

This paper studies the participation and performance of sophisticated versus unsophisticated auction participants in an environment with numerous bidders, uncertainty, and asymmetric information. We examine multi-unit, pay-as-bid, currency auctions conducted by the Central Bank of Venezuela. We...