We investigate the possibility of enhancing efficiency by awarding premiums to a set of highest bidders in an English auction - in a setting that extends Maskin and Riley (1984, Econometrica 52: 1473-1518) in three aspects: (i) the seller can be risk averse, (ii) the bidders can have...

Procurement auctions are widely used to solicit bids for custom items suchas services, construction projects, public infrastructure, and more. Such auctions involve significant risk because the idiosyncratic nature of the purchases means that delivered quality is uncertain. We examine the case...

An auction framework is examined where each seller is uncertain about whether or not he will have a good available to sell. A timely example includes the auctioning off of radio spectrum by licensed primary users to unlicensed secondary users. A licensed primary user may not use the spectrum all...

Procurement auctions are sometimes plagued with a chosen supplier's failing to accomplish a project successfully. The risk of project failure is considerable, especially when the buyer has inadequate information about suppliers ex ante and the project can only be evaluated at the end. To manage...