politically important. I illustrate with some disastrous government auctions, but also show the value of economic theory. …

critical papers in the subject. The most important of these are reproduced in a companion book, The Economic Theory of Auctions … the basic analysis of optimal auctions, the revenue equivalence theorem, and marginal revenues. Subsequent sections … address risk-aversion, affiliation, asymmetries, entry, collusion, multi-unit auctions, double auctions, royalties, incentive …

economic settings that do not, at first sight, look like auctions. We also discuss some more obvious applications, especially …

, predatory, and entry deterring behaviour. Ascending and uniform-price auctions are particularly vulnerable to these problems (we … discuss radiospectrum and football TV-rights auctions, electricity markets, and takeover battles), and the Anglo-Dutch auction … – a hybrid of the sealed-bid and ascending auctions may often perform better. However, everything depends on the details …

We study asymmetric all-pay auctions with multiple objects where players’ values for the objects are common knowledge …

This paper studies multiple object auctions when there are two kinds of bidders: those interested in the bundle being …-price auctions allows the implementation of the optimal mechanism, while a combination of first-price auctions does not. …

post. We show that this is achieved by bilateral negotiations but not by auctions. Negotiations strictly outperforms … auctions if sellers are likely to have superior information about possible design improvements, if renegotiation is costly, and … incentives for sellers to investigate possible design improvements than auctions. This provides an explanation for the widespread …