We study optimal auctions in a symmetric private values setting, where bidders' care about winning the object and a receiver's inference about their type. We reestablish revenue equivalence when bidders' signaling concerns are linear, and the auction makes participation observable via an entry...

It is well-known that the ability of the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism to implement efficient outcomes for private value choice problems does not extend to interdependent value problems. When an agent's type affects other agents' utilities, it may not be incentive compatible for him to...

McAfee and Reny (1992) have given a necessary and sufficient condition for full surplus extraction in naive type spaces with a continuum of payoff types. We generalize their characterization to arbitrary abstract type spaces and to the universal type space and show that in each setting, full...

I study a mechanism design problem of allocating a single good to an agent when the mechanism is followed by a post-mechanism game (aftermarket) played between the agent and a third-party. The aftermarket is beyond the direct control of the designer. However, she can influence the information...

Two potentially asymmetric players compete for a prize of common value, which is initially unknown, by exerting efforts. A designer has two instruments for contest design. First, she decides whether and how to disclose an informative signal of the prize value to players. Second, she sets the...

We consider imperfectly discriminating, common-value, all-pay auctions (or contests) where some players know the value of the prize, others do not. We show that if the prize is always of positive value, then all players are active in equilibrium. If the prize is of value zero with positive...

This paper shows that in online car auctions, resellers are better at appraising the value of the cars they are bidding on than are consumers. Using a unique data set of online car auctions, I show that differences in bidding behavior between resellers and consumers can be explained by...

We study the optimal entry fee in a symmetric private value first-price auction with signaling, in which the participation decisions and the auction outcome are used by an outside observer to infer the bidders' types. We show that this auction has a unique fully separating equilibrium bidding...