Raising the public administration's efficiency is, without any doubt, one of the greatest challenges nowadays in Brazil. The State's technical and allocative efficiency dimensions necessarily require efficiency of public agencies in the acquisition of inputs for their production and supply...

Auctions are the allocation-mechanisms of choice whenever goods and information in markets are scarce. Therefore, understanding how information affects welfare and revenues in these markets is of fundamental interest. We introduce new statistical concepts, k- and k-m-dispersion, for...

In mechanism design, Myerson regularity is often too weak for a quantitative analysis of performance. For instance, ratios between revenue and welfare, or sales probabilities may vanish at the boundary of Myerson regularity. This paper therefore explores the quantitative version of Myerson...

Public agencies mainly rely on two modes to procure goods and services: auctions and direct negotiations. We study a 1994 policy change in Germany that introduced the possibility to procure rail services in auctions as well as in direct negotiations with the incumbent. We analyze the effect of...

In the variable supply auction considered here, the seller decides how many costumers with unit demand to serve after observing their bids. Bidders are uncertain about the seller's cost. We experimentally investigate whether a uniform or a discriminatory price auction is better for the seller in...

There is by now a large literature arguing that auctions with a variety of after-market interactions may not yield an efficient allocation of the objects for sale, especially when the bidders impose strong negative externalities upon each other. This paper argues that these inefficiencies can be...

We consider competitive behaviour in sequential markets when current success or failure may affect the probability of future market opportunities. The analysis is conducted in a set up which may be interpreted as two private-value, sealed-bid, second-price sequential auctions. We demonstrate...

If bidders are uncertain whether the auctioneer sticks to the announced reserve, some bidders respond by strategic non-participation, speculating that the auctioneer may revoke the reserve. However, the reserve inadvertently signals the auctioneer's type, which drives a unique separating and a...

During the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve implemented several novel programs to address adverse conditions in financial markets. Three of these temporary programs relied on an auction mechanism: the Term Auction Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, and the disposition of the...

This paper considers procurement auctions with costly bidding when the auctioneer is unable to commit himself to restrict the number of bidders. The auctioneer can, however, offer a financial reward to be paid to every short-listed bidders as an indirect commitment device. Rewards for...