former favor the weak buyer. However, we show that the seller can do one better by augmenting the first-price auction by a … pre-auction offer made exclusively to the strong buyer. Should the strong buyer reject the offer, the object is simply … sold in an ordinary first-price auction. The result is driven by the fact that the unmodified first-price auction is too …

A bidder is said to be advantaged if she has a higher expected valuation of the auction prize than her competitor. When … the prize has a common-value component, a bidder competing in an ascending auction against an advantaged competitor bids … the auction, and the presence of a bidder with a small advantage does not have a dramatic e¤ect on the seller.s revenue. …

second-price sealed bid auction that lets the insider win only if his bid is above a hurdle price …

reduce auction efficiency. In contrast to what is usually argued, resale does not necessarily increase final efficiency and …

with three auction formats that make bidding difficult in different ways. We find that measures of ‘difficulty’ provide a …

reduce auction efficiency. In contrast to what is usually argued, resale does not necessarily increase final efficiency and …

We review an asymmetric auction experiment. Based on Plum (1992) private valuations of the two bidders are …

favor the weak buyer. However, we show that the seller can do one better by augmenting the first-price auction by a pre-auction … ordinary first-price auction. The result is driven by the fact that the unmodified first-price auction is too favorable to the … weak buyer, and that the pre-auction offer allows some correction of this to the benefit of the seller. Secondly, we show …