In a lab experiment, we analyze the benefits of increasing competition on auction platforms hosting multiple auctioneers of a homogeneous good. We find that increasing competition by merging separated individual auctions increases market efficiency and also buyers' payoffs, while there is no...

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...

In mechanism design, Myerson regularity is often too weak for a quantitative analysis of performance. For instance, ratios between revenue and welfare, or sales probabilities may vanish at the boundary of Myerson regularity. This paper therefore explores the quantitative version of Myerson...

We consider a multi-dimensional procurement problem in which sellers have private information about their costs and about a possible design flaw. The information about the design flaw is necessarily correlated. We solve for the optimal Bayesian procurement mechanism that implements the efficient...

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,...

Problem Definition: We consider a buyer that needs to source a fixed quantity. She faces several potential suppliers that might fail to deliver. The buyer conducts a procurement auction to determine contract suppliers and can choose between single-sourcing and multi-sourcing. If contract...

We show that it is beneficial for a buyer to conduct a multi-stage mechanism if bidders are loss averse. In a first step, we derive a revenue equivalence principle. Fixing the multi-stage structure, the revenue is independent of the chosen payment rule. Secondly, we introduce a simple two-stage...

We study the role of commitment in a first-price auction environment. We devise a simple two-stage model in which bidders first submit an initial offer that the auctioneer can observe and then make a counteroffer. There is no commitment on the auctioneer's side to accept an offer as is or even...

Agents are farsighted when they consider the ultimate consequences of their actions. We re-examine the classical questions of implementation theory under complete information in a setting with transfers, where farsighted coalitions are considered fundamental behavioral units, and the equilibrium...

Microcredit, a financial tool providing uncollateralized loans to low-income individuals, has seen a shift from joint-liability (JL) to individual liabil- ity (IL) lending models. This article tests a theory explaining this shift, focusing on borrowers matching into groups exposed to similar...