Vickrey (second-price, sealed-bid) auctions have attractive theoretical properties, but standard first-price, sealed bidding is far more common. Explanations of the rarity of Vickrey auctions rely on concern about revelation of private information and on fear of cheating. We present two models...

We analyze the preferences of a risk-averse seller over the class of "standard" auctions with symmetric and risk-neutral bidders. Assuming that buyers' private signals are independently distributed, we find that a sealed-bid first-price auction with an appropriately set reserve price is...

We present an alternative abstraction of an English (oral ascending) auction to the standard, in Milgrom and Weber (1982), that accords more closely with practices in some auction markets. In particular, the assumptions that exits are irrevocable and necessarily public are dropped, making...