We consider a seller who faces several buyers and lacks access to an institution to credibly close a sale. If buyers anticipate that the seller may negotiate further, they will prefer to wait before making their best and final offers. This in turn induces the seller to bargain at length with...

We investigate the "generalized second-price" (GSP) auction, a new mechanism used by search engines to sell online advertising. Although GSP looks similar to the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism, its properties are very different. Unlike the VCG mechanism, GSP generally does not have an...