An oil lease auction is the classic example motivating a common values model. However, formal testing for common values has been hindered by unobserved auction-level heterogeneity, which is likely to affect both participation in an auction and bidders' willingness to pay. We develop and apply an...

In a "common values" environment, some market participants have private information relevant to others' assessments of their own valuations or costs. Economic theory shows that this type of informational asymmetry can have important implications for market performance and market design. Yet even...