In theory, combinatorial auctions can provide significant benefits in many real-world applications, such as truckload procurement. In practice, however, the use of such auctions has been greatly limited by the need for bidders to bid on an exponential number of bundles and for the auctioneer to...

We examine auction data to determine if bid rigging presents in procurement auctions for paving works in Ibaraki City, Osaka, Japan. We first show that sporadic bidding wars are caused by the participation of potential “outsiders.” Assuming that the ring is all-inclusive if the auction is...

We consider the problem faced by a procurement agency that runs a mechanism for constructing an assortment of differentiated products with posted prices, from which heterogeneous consumers buy their most preferred alternative. Procurement mechanisms used by large organizations, including...

We show that it is beneficial for a buyer to conduct a multi-stage mechanism if bidders are loss averse. In a first step, we derive a revenue equivalence principle. Fixing the multi-stage structure, the revenue is independent of the chosen payment rule. Secondly, we introduce a simple two-stage...

The targeted design of auctions has to take behavioral regularities into account. This paper explores whether procurement auction formats can take advantage of bidders' willingness-to-pay-willingness-to-accept disparity. In a laboratory experiment, we compare four different second-price auction...

In procurement auctions, bidders are usually better informed about technical, financial, or legal aspects of the goods and services procured. Therefore, the buyer may include a dialogue in the procurement procedure which enables the suppliers to reveal information that will help the buyer to...

The innovation of construction procurement by means of electronic reverse auctions is a controversial subject of discussion among both researchers and practitioners. This paper consolidates and critically discusses current knowledge concerning the adoption and use of electronic reverse auctions...

Governmental agencies use score procurement auctions to incorporate other attributes beyond price in their purchase decisions. We establish nonparametric econometric identification of bidders' independent private (pseudo)types for multi-attribute procurement, where bids are evaluated using a...

A buyer seeking to outsource production may be able to find ways to reduce a potential supplier's cost, e.g., by suggesting improvements to the supplier's proposed production methods. We study how a buyer could use such "cost reduction investigations" by proposing a three-step supplier selection...

We investigate the impact of using a clear scoring rule in a sealed bid multi-dimensional (A+B) procurement auction, as frequently used in government procurement. The central procurement agency in Chile (ChileCompra) asked for help to understand how concealing the scoring rule affected buyers....