We study optimal mechanisms for a utilitarian designer who seeks to assign a finite number of goods to a group of ex ante heterogeneous agents with unit demand. The agents have heterogeneous marginal utilities of money, which may naturally arise in environments where agents have different wealth...

We study optimal mechanisms for a utilitarian designer who seeks to assign a finite number of goods to a group of ex ante heterogeneous agents with unit demand. The agents have heterogeneous marginal utilities of money, which may naturally arise in environments where agents have different wealth...

Auctions with endogenous rationing have been introduced to stimulate competition. Such (procurement) auctions reduce the volume put out to tender when competition is low. This paper finds a strong negative effect of endogenous rationing on participation when bid-preparation is costly,...

Auctions with endogenous rationing have been introduced to stimulate competition. Such (procurement) auctions reduce the volume put out to tender when competition is low. This paper finds a strong negative effect of endogenous rationing on participation when bid-preparation is costly,...

We study optimal selling strategies of a seller who is poorly informed about the buyer’s value for the object. When the maxmin seller only knows that the mean of the distribution of the buyer’s valuations belongs to some interval then nature can keep him to payoff zero no matter how much...

We study optimal selling strategies of a seller who is poorly informed about the buyer’s value for the object. When the maxmin seller only knows that the mean of the distribution of the buyer's valuations belongs to some interval then nature can keep him to payoff zero no matter how much...