We model uniform and discriminatory auctions in wholesale electricity markets. High variability of electricity prices is often explained by exogenous economic factors. We, however, show that it can result endogenously from suppliers' strategic bidding, and that the connection between demand and...

This contribution revisits the problem of allocating R&D subsidies by government agencies. Typically, the applicants' financial constraints are private information. The literature has recommended the use of auctions in order to reduce information rents and thus improve the efficiency of how...

We analyse how the market design influences the bidding behavior in multi-unit auctions, such as wholesale electricity markets. It is shown that competition improves for increased market transparency and we identify circumstances where the auctioneer prefers uniform to discriminatory pricing. We...

We analyze how market design influences the bidding behavior in multi-unit procurement auctions where suppliers have uncertain costs and are uncertain about the availability of production units, as in wholesale electricity markets. We find that the competitiveness of market outcomes improves...

This chapter explores the state of the emerging practice of designing markets by the use of agent-based modeling, with special reference to electricity markets and computerized (on-line) markets, perhaps including real-life electronic agents as well as human traders. The paper first reviews the...

Mechanism design is a subfield of game theory that aims to design games whose equilibria have desired properties such as achieving high efficiency or high revenue. Algorithmic mechanism design is a subfield that lies on the border of mechanism design and computer science and deals with mechanism...

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...

A principal uses security bid auctions to award an incentive contract to one among several agents in the presence of hidden action and hidden information. Securities range from cash to equity and call options. "Steeper" securities are better surplus extractors that narrow the gap between the two...

This paper revisits the standard analysis of licensing a cost reducing innovation by an outside innovator to a Cournot oligopoly. We propose a new mechanism that combines elements of a license auction with royalty licensing by granting the losers of the auction the option to sign a royalty...

An auction is externality-robust if unilateral deviations from equilibrium leave the other bidders' payoffs unaffected. The equilibrium and its outcome will then persist if certain types of externalities arise between bidders. One example are externalities due to spiteful preferences, which have...