We investigate equilibria of sealed-bid second price auctions with bidder participation costs in the independent private values environment. We focus on equilibria in which bidders use cut-off strategies (bid the valuation if it is greater than a certain cut-off point, otherwise do not...

We investigate whether efficient collusive bidding mechanisms are affected by potential information leakage from bidders' decisions to participate in them within the independent private values setting. We apply the concept of ratifiability introduced by Cramton and Palfrey (1995) and show that...

We study equilibria in second price auctions when bidders are independently and privately informed about both their values and participation costs and their joint distributions across bidders are not necessarily identical. We show that there always exists an equilibrium in this general setting...

The defendant is either innocent or guilty, which she, not the court or prosecutor, knows. The court convicts the defendant whenever its posterior probability of her guilt - which depends on the evidence presented - is greater than . Evidence production by litigating parties is a costly...

We study the optimal auction problem with participation costs in the symmetric independent private values setting, where bidders know their valuations when they make independent participation decisions. After characterizing the optimal auction in terms of participation cutoffs, we provide an...