In analyzing bidding, modeling matters. This paper is a critical analysis of the models available to aid competitive bidding decision making---bidding strategy and auction design---in real transactions. After an introductory overview, this paper describes the contexts in which auctions arise,...

There is interest in designing simultaneous auctions for situations such as the recent FCC radio spectrum auctions, in which the value of assets to a bidder depends on which other assets he or she wins. In such auctions, bidders may wish to submit bids for combinations of assets. When this is...

We present an alternative abstraction of an English (oral ascending) auction to the standard, in Milgrom and Weber (1982), that accords more closely with practices in some auction markets. In particular, the assumptions that exits are irrevocable and necessarily public are dropped, making...

A widespread practice, particularly in public-sector procurement and dispersal, is to subsidize a class of competitors believed to be at an economic disadvantage. Arguments for such policies vary, but they typically assume that benefits of subsidization must be large enough to outweigh a...

We consider a model of search when the distribution of prices (wages) is unknown. The effect of changing the objective function from minimizing expected cost to maximizing expected utility is examined.