We show that synergies enhance bidding competition to such an extent that they are a curse rather than a blessing for the bidders; they may even induce serious bankruptcy problems.

We study a framework where two duopolists compete repeatedly in prices and where chosen prices potentially affect future market shares, but certainly do not affect current sales. This assumption of consumer inertia causes (noncooperative) coordination on high prices only to be possible as an...

In this paper we analyze the performance of a recently proposed sequential auction, called the c-bisection auction, that can be used for a sale of a single indivisible object. We discuss the running time and the e±ciency in the ex-post equilibrium of the auction. We show that by changing the...

In this paper we present a generalization of the Shapley-Ichiishi result for convex games to the class of all exact games. Then we discuss two applications to the class of convex games. First we show that it can indeed be used to give an alternative proof of the Shapley-Ichiishi result. Secondly...

We study a framework where two duopolists compete repeatedly in prices and where cho-sen prices potentially affect future market shares, but certainly do not affect current sales.This assumption of consumer inertia causes (noncooperative) coordination on high pricesonly to be possible as an...

The VCG mechanism has some nice properties if the agents-are-substitutes property holds.For example, for combinatorial auctions the property assures that the VCG mechanism is supported by a pricing equilibrium. The existence of such a pricing equilibrium is a necessary condition for the...

In this paper it is shown how to compute stable sets, defined by Mertens (1989), inthe context of bimatrix games only using linear optimization techniques.

Query auctions are iterative auctions in which bidders have to select in each round an action from a finite set. We show that, when bidders have continuous valuations, any ex post equilibrium in an ex post individually rational query auction can only be ex post efficient when the running time of...

We investigate the algorithmic performance of Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanisms in the single item case. We provide a formal definition of a Vickrey algorithm for this framework, and give a number of examples of Vickrey algorithms. We consider three performance criteria, one corresponding to a...

The goal of this paper is twofold. Firstly a short proof of the unicity of the reduced form of a normal form game is provided, using a technique to reduce a game originally introduced by Mertens. Secondly a direct combinatorial-geometric interpretation of the reduced form is described. This...