We briefly survey several insights about value and revenue maximization in multi-object auctions and apply them to the German (and Austrian) UMTS auction. In particular, we discuss in detail the exposure probelm that caused firms in Germany to pay almost Euro 20 billion for nothing.

This paper discusses some economic aspects of the recent German and Austrian UMTS license auctions. We consider a stylized model of the open ascending auction with incomplete information and market externalities. It is shown that, if the dominant incumbent is not successful in pushing the...