In this paper, we estimate the inefficiency in online auctions. Online auctions can be inefficient due to the Internet fraud. A typical example of Internet fraud is when sellers do not send goods to winning bidders even though they have received payment. Therefore, bidders always bear a risk of...

We analyze a setting common in privatizations, public tenders, and takeovers in which the ex post efficient allocation, i.e., the first best, is not implementable. Our first main result is that the open ascending auction is not second best because it is prone to rushes, i.e., all active bidders...

We consider the problem of allocating heterogeneous objects to agents with money, where the number of agents exceeds that of objects. Each agent can receive at most one object, and some objects may remain unallocated. A bundle is a pair consisting of an object and a payment. An agent's...

We consider the problem of allocating multiple units of an indivisible object among agents and collecting payments. Each agent can receive multiple units of the object, and his (consumption) bundle is a pair of the units he receives and his payment. An agent's preference over bundles may be...

Abstract Strategy-proof, budget balanced, and envy-free linear mechanisms assign p identical objects to n agents. The efficiency loss is the largest ratio of surplus loss to efficient surplus, over all profiles of non-negative valuations. The smallest efficiency loss \frac{n-p}{n^{2}-n} is...

We study the slot allocation problem where agents have quasi-linear single-peaked preferences over slots and identify the rules satisfying efficiency, strategy-proofness, and individual rationality. Since the quasi-linear single-peaked domain is not connected, the famous characterization of the...

We study the slot allocation problem where agents have quasi-linear single-peaked preferences over slots and identify the rules satisfying efficiency, strategy-proofness, and individual rationality. Since the quasi-linear single-peaked domain is not connected, the famous characterization of the...

Consider agents who undertake costly effort to produce stochastic outputs observable by a principal. The principal can award a prize deterministically to the agent with the highest output, or to all of them with probabilities that are proportional to their outputs. We show that, if there is...

Economic analysis of spectrum allocation policies focuses on competitive bidding for wireless licenses. Auctions generating high bids, as in Germany and the UK, are identified as successful, while those producing lower receipts, as in Switzerland and the Netherlands, are deemed fiascoes. Yet,...

We use laboratory experiments to compare allocation rules in uniform price divisible good auctions. 'Standard' and 'uniform' allocation rules admit different types of low-price equilibria, which are eliminated by a 'hybrid' rule. We observe little evidence of revenue differences among the...