This paper characterizes the optimal first-price auction (FPA) and second-price auction (SPA) for selling rights, contracts, or licenses that involve ensuing payoff uncertainty for the winning bidder. The distribution of the random payoff is common knowledge, except that bidders have private...

A simultaneous pooled auction with multiple bids and preference lists is a way to auction multiple objects, in which bidders simultaneously express a bid for each object and a preference ordering over which object they would like to get in case they have the highest bid on more than one object....

A number of heterogeneous items are to be sold to a group of potential bidders. Every bidder knows his own values over the items and his own budget privately. Due to budget constraint, bidders may not be able to pay up to their values. In such a market, a Walrasian equilibrium usually fails to...

There is by now a large literature arguing that auctions with a variety of after-market interactions may not yield an efficient allocation of the objects for sale, especially when the bidders impose strong negative externalities upon each other. This paper argues that these inefficiencies can be...

In this note, we experimentally examine the relative performance of price-only auctions and multi-attribute auctions. We do so in procurement settings where the buyer can give the winning bidder incentives to exert effort on non-price dimensions after the auction. Both auctions theoretically...

If a government auctions the right to market a good, continuity is likely to be of significant importance. In a laboratory experiment, we compare the effects of bidders' limited liability in the first-price sealed-bid auction and the English auction in a common value setting. Our data strongly...

We experimentally examine the collusive properties of two commonly used auctions: the English auction (EN) and the first-price sealed-bid auction (FPSB). In theory, both tacit and overt collusion are always incentive compatible in EN while both can be incentive compatible in FPSB if the auction...

Many organizations use procurement tenders to buy large amounts of goods and services. Especially in the public sector the use of these reverse auctions has grown rapidly over the past decades. For the (reverse) unit price auction experience as well as theory have shown that they can attract...

We study the equilibrium of the all-pay auction with complete information and a reserve price, and compare it with that of standard auctions. The seller should set a reserve price even when she faces incomplete information. In the latter setting, ex-ante asymmetry among bidders appears necessary...

According to the so-called Exclusion Principle (introduced by Baye et alii, 1993), it might be profitable for the seller to reduce the number of (fullyinformed) potential bidders in an all-pay auction. We show that the Exclusion Principle does not apply if the seller regards the bidders' private...