This paper reviews the part played by economists in organizing the British third-generation mobile-phone licence auction that concluded on 27 April 2000. It raised £22½ billion ($34 billion or 2½ % of GNP) and was widely described at the time as the biggest auction ever. We discuss the merits...

We propose a basic theoretical model of eBay’s reputation mechanism, derive a series of implications and empirically test their validity. Our theoretical model features both adverse selection and moral hazard. We show that when a seller receives a negative rating for the first time his...

 A social planner wishes to launch a project but the contenders capable of running the project are cash-constrained and may default.  To signal their capabilities, the contenders may finance their bids through debt or equity, depending on the mechanism chosen by the social planner.  When...

In a laboratory setting, a monopolistic auctioneer sells to buyers as the level and nature of demand changes. I ask whether sellers correctly recognize the role played by correlation among buyers' values. The prices set by subjects closely match the risk-neutral benchmark predictions when demand...

Although one may hope to achieve equality of stated profits without enforcing it, one may not trust in such voluntary equality seeking and rather try to impose rules (of bidding) guaranteeing it. Our axiomatic approach is based on envy-free net trades according to bids which, together with the...

Strategic market interaction is here modelled as a two-stage game in which potential entrants choose capacities and active firms compete in prices. Due to capital indivisibility, the capacity choice is made from a finite grid and there are substantial economies of scale. In the simplest version...

Our paper models the relationship between price and quality regulation in a physical network industry. The analysis is closely inspired by some of the major regulatory features of the current organisation of the British railways industry, even though its insights have more general implications....

This paper presents the outcome of an experiment where the standard one shot sealed bid procurement auction for two identical goods provides the benchmark. Inducing scale economies a combinatorial auction is applied on the situation with non-linear costs. The mechanisms are first run without,...

Public procurement faces the risk that the contractor goes bankrupt before the completion of the work. The possibility to declare bankruptcy makes the contractors behave more aggressively.This leads to abnormally low tenders and to the break-down of revenue equivalence. Upon this result we...

Procurement awarding mechanisms based on average price have been advocated to soften price competition and reduce cost overruns. We show that their theoretical support is shaky. When the bid closest to the average is awarded, firms submit identical bids, making the selection extremely costly and...