We study optimal mechanisms for a utilitarian designer who seeks to assign a finite number of goods to a group of ex ante heterogeneous agents with unit demand. The agents have heterogeneous marginal utilities of money, which may naturally arise in environments where agents have different wealth...

Procurement auctions that assume independent private values (IPV) provide a benchmark for analysis that is readily demonstrated but often unrealistic. Firms who compete for exclusive selling rights normally derive outputs from a highly similar set of inputs which, in turn, allows them to obtain...

We propose a dynamic auction mechanism for efficiently allocating multiple heterogeneous indivisible goods. These goods can be split into two distinct sets so that items in each set are substitutes but complementary to items in the other set. The seller has a reserve value for each bundle of...

For a repeated procurement problem, we compare two stylized negotiating cultures which differ in how the buyer uses an entrant to exert pressure on the incumbent resembling U.S. style and Japanese style procurement. In each period, the suppliers are privately informed about their production...

We develop a novel theory of real estate foreclosure auctions, which have the special feature that the lender acts as a seller for low and as a buyer for high prices. The theory yields several empirically testable predictions concerning the strategic behavior of the agents, both under symmetric...

Why do some incomplete information markets feature intermediaries while others do not? I study the allocation of two goods in an incomplete information setting with a single principal, multiple agents with unit demand, and interdependent valuations. I construct a novel dynamic mechanism...

In Buy-It-Now auctions, sellers can post a take-it-or-leave-it price offer prior to an auction. While the literature almost exclusively looks at buyers in such combined mechanisms, the current paper summarizes results from the sellers' point of view. Buy-It-Now auctions are complex mechanisms...

A risk-neutral principal considers hiring one agent to improve a valuable, observable outcome. Who to hire? How to motivate? In this paper, the principal designs an incentive contract that pays according to the realized outcome and sells the contract to an agent through an auction. The paper...