This paper investigates firms' incentives to invest in cost reduction in the first price sealed bid auction, a format largely used for procurement. Two central features of the model are that we allow firms to be heterogeneous and that investment is observable. We find that firms will tend to...

We investigate firms' incentives for cost reduction in the first price sealed bid auction, a format largely used for procurement. A central feature of the model is that we allow firms to be heterogeneous. Though private value first price auctions are not games with monotonic best responses, we...

Suppose a firm uses inputs that are substitutes. Each input is supplied by a single contractor. The firm would like to make suppliers compete. However, since inputs are imperfect substitutes, resorting to winner-take-all competition may not be an attractive option. We allow the firm to use a...