Procurement awarding mechanisms based on average price have been advocated to soften price competition and reduce cost overruns. We show that their theoretical support is shaky. When the bid closest to the average is awarded, firms submit identical bids, making the selection extremely costly and...

[This item is a preserved copy. To view the original, visit http://econtheory.org/] This paper considers an auction design framework in which bidders get partial feedback about the distribution of bids submitted in earlier auctions: either bidders are asymmetric but past bids are disclosed in an...