We compare the two most common bidding processes for selling a company or other asset when participation is costly to buyers. In an auction all entry decisions are made prior to any bidding. In a sequential bidding process earlier entrants can make bids before later entrants choose whether to...

Actions a firm takes in one market may affect its profitability in other markets, beyond any joint economies or diseconomies in production. The reason is that an action in one market, by changing marginal costs in a second market, may change competitors' strategies in that second market. We show...

Most markets clear through a sequence of sales rather than through a Walrasian auctioneer. Because buyers can decide between buying now or later, rather than only now or never, buyers' current 'willingness to pay' is much more sensitive to price than is the demand curve. A consequence is that...

This major two volume collection presents some of the most influential theoretical and empirical papers on the economic theory of auctions.

Price controls lead to misallocation of goods and encourage rent-seeking. The misallocation effect alone is enough to ensure that consumer surplus is always reduced by a price control in an otherwise-competitive market with convex demand if supply is more elastic than demand; or when demand is...

Today's regulatory rules, especially the easily-manipulated measures of regulatory capital, have led to costly bank failures. We design a robust regulatory system such that (i) bank losses are credibly borne by the private sector (ii) systemically important institutions cannot collapse suddenly;...

We analyse the major economic issues raised by the 1997 Tobacco Resolution and the ensuing proposed legislation that were intended to settle tobacco litigation in the United States. By settling litigation largely in return for tax increases, the Resolution was a superb example of a win-win deal....

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...

The condition for when a price control increases consumer welfare in perfect competition is tighter than often realised.  When demand is linear, a small restriction on price only increases consumer surplus if the eleasticity of demand exceeds the elasticity of supply; with log-linear or...