We provide conditions that simplify applying Reny's (1999) better-reply security to Bayesian games, and use these conditions to prove the existence of equilibria for classes of games in which payoff discontinuities arise only at "ties." These games include a general version of all-pay contests,...

With a laboratory experiment, we study the impact of buy-options and the corresponding buy-price on revenues and bidding behavior in (online) proxy-auctions with independent private valuations. We show that temporary buy-options may reduce revenues for two reasons: At low buy-prices, the...

The price mechanism is fundamental to economics but difficult to reconcile with incentive compatibility and individual rationality. We introduce a double clock auction for a homogeneous good market with multidimensional private information and multiunit traders that is deficit-free, ex post...

We study when equilibrium prices can aggregate information in an auction market with a large population of traders. Our main result identifies a property of information---the betweenness property---that is both necessary and sufficient for information aggregation. The characterization provides...

We characterize revenue maximizing mechanisms in a common value environment where the value of the object is equal to the highest of bidders’ independent signals. If the object is optimally sold with probability one, then the optimal mechanism is simply a posted price, with the highest...

We investigate whether revenue-maximizing auctioneers selling heterogeneous items will allow for combinatorial bidding in the presence of auctioneer competition. We compare the choice of auction format by two competing auctioneers with that of a single auctioneer. Bidders are heterogeneous in...

We give a sufficient condition on the type space for revenue equivalence when the set of social alternatives consists of probability distributions over a finite set. Types are identified with real-valued functions that assign valuations to elements of this finite set, and the type space is...

In a general model of common-value second-price auctions with differential information, we show equivalence between the following characteristics of a bidder: (i) having a dominant strategy; (ii) possessing superior information; (iii) being immune from winner's curse. When a dominant strategy...

The paper is the first to derive and analyse theoretically the equilibrium properties of 'revenue neutral auctions', in the context of tradable pollution rights. By 'revenue neutrality' we mean that the objective of the agency distributing the rights is not to maximize earnings from the auction...

The paper is the first to derive and analyse theoretically the equilibrium properties of 'revenue neutral auctions', in the context of tradable pollution rights. By 'revenue neutrality' we mean that the objective of the agency distributing the rights is not to maximize earnings from the auction...