The Sotheby`s/Christie`s price-fixing scandal that ended in the public trial of Alfred Taubman provides a unique window on a number of key economic and antitrust policy issues related to the use of the auction system. The trial provided detailed evidence as to how the price fixing worked, and...

This paper tests for reference dependence, using data from Impressionist and Contemporary Art auctions. We distinguish reference dependence based on rule of thumb learning from reference dependence based on rational learning. Furthermore, we distinguish pure reference dependence from effects due...

This paper presents an empirical study of paintings that have failed to meet their reserve price at auction. In the art trade it is often claimed that when an advertised item goes unsold at auction, its future value will be affected. We have constructed a new dataset specifically for the purpose...

Part ownership of a takeover target can help a bidder win a takeover auction, often at a low price. A bidder with a toehold bids aggressively in a standard ascending auction because its offers are both bids for the remaining shares and asks for its own holdings. While the direct effect of a...

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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 earlier entrants can make bids before later entrants choose whether to compete....

This paper, forthcoming in Journal of Economic Surveys, provides an elementary, non-technical, survey of auction theory, by introducing and describing some of the critical papers in the subject. (The most important of these are reproduced in a companion book, The Economic Theory of Auctions,...

We model a War of Attrition with N+K firms competing for N prizes. If firms must pay their full costs until the whole game ends, even after dropping out themselves (as in a standard-setting context), each firms exit time is independent both of K and of other players actions. If, instead, firms...

This paper reviews the part played by economists in organizing the British third-generation mobile-phone licence auction that concluded on 27 April 2000. It raised £22 1/2 billion ($34 billion or 2 1/2% of GNP) and was widely described at the time as the biggest auction ever. We discuss the...

There were enormous differences in the revenues from the European third generation (3G, or UMTS) mobile-phone license auctions, from 20 Euros per capita in Switzerland to 650 Euros per capita in the U.K., though the values of the licences sold were similar. Poor auction designs in some countries...