This paper studies federal auctions for wildcat leases on the Outer Continental Shelf from 1954 to 1970. These are leases where bidders privately acquire (at some cost) noisy, but equally informative, signals about the amount of oil and gas that may be present. We develop a test of equilibrium...

This paper studies federal auctions for wildcat leases on the Outer Continental Shelf from 1954 to 1970. These are leases where bidders privately acquire (at some cost) noisy, but equally informative, signals about the amount of oil and gas that may be present. We develop a test of equilibrium...

This paper studies federal auctions for wildcat leases on the Outer Continental Shelf from 1959 to 1970. These are leases where bidders privately acquire (at some cost) noisy, but equally informative signals about the amount of oil and gas that may be present. We develop a test of equilibrium...