We consider a model of oligopolistic firms that have private information about their cost structure. Prior to competing in the market a competitive advantage, i.e., a cost reducing technology, is allocated to a subset of the firms by means of a multi-object auction. After the auction either all...

We consider procurement of an innovation from heterogeneous sellers. Innovations are random but depend on unobservable effort and private information. We compare two procurement mechanisms where potential sellers first bid in an auction for admission to an innovation contest. After the contest,...

This paper reconsiders the licensing of a common value innovation to a downstream duopoly, assuming a dual licensing scheme that combines a first-price license auction with royalty contracts for losers. Prior to bidding firms observe imperfect signals of the expected cost reduction; after the...

We consider a variant of the Tullock rent-seeking contest. Under symmetric information we determine equilibrium strategies and prove their uniqueness. Then, we assume contestants to be privately informed about their costs of effort. We prove existence of a pure-strategy equilibrium and provide a...

We present a new dynamic auction for procurement problems where payments are bounded by a hard budget constraint and money does not enter the procurer's objective function.

This paper evaluates the welfare consequences of the failing firm doctrine in the EU and US merger laws. I combine an oligopoly model with an 'endogenous valuations' auction model. Thereby, I take into account that, in an oligopoly, a firm's willingness to pay for the assets depends on the...

Many economic and political decisions are the outcome of strategic contests for a given prize. The nature of such contests can be determined by a designer who is driven by political considerations with a specific political culture. The main objective of this study is to analyze the effect of...

In this paper we consider the following problem: a Company wants to sell consecutive time slots on a single machine. It wants to maximize the revenues, whereby market prizes are not known. Additionally, consider a number of potential buyers of those time slots providing each at least one job....

In this paper we consider the problem of allocating scarce resources in a divisionalized company; the resources are made available by the headquarters and requested by profit centers (PCs). This problem was observed at a large german insurance company (LAGIC). Currently, the resources are...