Recently, the combinatorial clock auction has become more and more common in the auctioning of telecommunication licenses. Although the auction design is complex, the promise is that bidding becomes simple - truthtelling is "close to optimal". We show that this claim is too strong. The auction...

The regulatory landscape is changing towards more flexible spectrum management schemes. Such schemes are expected to make additional spectrum resources available and lower the spectrum access barriers. Emerging spectrum authorization schemes such as secondary access (TV White Space) and Licensed...

FCC spectrum auctions sell licenses to provide mobile phone service in designated geographic territories. We propose a method to structurally estimate the deterministic component of bidder valuations and apply it to the 1995-1996 C-block auction. We base our estimation of bidder values on a...

In recent years, regulatory bodies in Europe and around the world implemented Combinatorial Clock Auctions (CCA) to allocate scarce and valuable spectrum frequencies usage rights. Although the auction design is complex, the promise is that bidding becomes simple. More precisely, bidders may bid...

During the recent sales of UMTS licenses in Europe some countries used auctions while others resorted to so-called Beauty Contests. There seems to be a wide consensus among economists that in these and other contexts like privatisation an auction is the better selling mechanism. However, why...

In this paper I review the Dutch UMTS-auction that took place in the summer of 2000 and which, in contrast to the UK and German auctions, was generally considered to be a major flop. I analyse the policy process leading to the auction as well as the bidding behaviour in the auction, and provide...

We briefly survey several insights about value and revenue maximization in multi-object auctions and apply them to the German (and Austrian) UMTS auction. In particular, we discuss in detail the exposure problem that caused firms in Germany to pay almost Euro 20 billion for nothing

This paper considers bidder behaviour in the United Kingdom's UMTS spectrum auction. Evidence is reviewed which shows that some bidders in this auction did not bid straightforwardly in accordance with fixed valuations of the licenses. We go on to consider more speculative hypotheses about...