Infrastructure projects are often technically complicated and highly customized. Therefore, procurement competition tends to be limited. Competition is the single most important factor toward auction efficiency and anti-corruption. However, the degree of competition realized is closely related...

Limited competition has been a serious concern in infrastructure procurement. Importantly, however, there are normally a number of potential bidders initially showing interest in proposed projects. This paper focuses on tackling the question why these initially interested bidders fade out. An...

We introduce 'formal methods' of mechanized reasoning from computer science to address two problems in auction design and practice: is a given auction design soundly specified, possessing its intended properties; and, is the design faithfully implemented when actually run? Failure on either...

This paper reports on the design of a novel two-stage mechanism, based on strictly proper scoring rules, that allows a centre to acquire a costly probabilistic estimate of some unknown parameter, by eliciting and fusing estimates from multiple suppliers. Each of these suppliers is capable of...

This paper analyses the pay-per-bid auctions which have appeared recently on the Internet and scored an immediate business success. In these auctions bidders pay a small, but irrevocable fee each time they want to increase the price. In this paper we test the model suggested by Platt, Price and...

Public procurement is a dynamic process involving vendors, contractors and procuring agencies. Even before submitting bids, competition among contractors may already have started. Given the nature of public work and expected strategies of rivals, some firms decide to enter the market, but others...

Formal methods use computers to verify proofs or even discover new theorems. Interest in applying formal methods to problems in economics has increased in the past decade, but - to date - none of this work has been published in economics journals. This paper applies formal methods to a familiar...

This book is a non-technical introduction to auction theory; its practical application in auction design (including many examples); and its uses in other parts of economics. It can be used for a graduate course on auction theory, or – by picking selectively – an advanced...

This paper reports on the design of a novel two-stage mechanism, based on strictly proper scoring rules, that allows a centre to acquire a costly forecast of a future event (such as a meteorological phenomenon) or a probabilistic estimate of a specific parameter (such as the quality of an...

This paper develops a payoff equivalence theorem for mechanisms with ambiguity averse participants with preferences of the Maxmin Expected Utility (MEU) form (Gilboa and Schmeidler, 1989). We use our payoff equivalence result to explicitly characterize the revenue maximizing private value...