Economic theory is often abused in practical policy-making. There is frequently excessive focus on sophisticated theory at the expense of elementary theory; too much economic knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing. Too little attention is paid to the wider economic context, and to the...

We propose a new, easy-to-implement class of payment rules, "Reference Rules" to make core-selecting package auctions more robust. Small, almost-riskless, profitable deviations from "truthful bidding" are often easy for bidders to find under currently used payment rules. Reference Rules perform...

I describe a new static (sealed-bid) auction for differentiated goods--the "Product-Mix Auction." Bidders bid on multiple assets simultaneously, and bid-takers choose supply functions across assets. The auction yields greater efficiency, revenue, information, and trade than running multiple...