We study the design of profit maximizing single unit auctions under the assumption that the seller needs to incur costs to contact prospective bidders and inform them about the auction. With independent bidders’ types and possibly interdependent valuations, the seller’s problem can be...

We consider auction environments in which bidders must incur a cost to learn their valuations and study the optimal selling mechanisms in such environments. These mechanisms specify for each period, as a function of the bids in previous periods, which new potential buyers should be asked to bid....

This paper analyzes simultaneous ascending auctions of two different items, viewed as complements by multi-item bidders. The finding is that such auctions overly concentrate the goods to a multi-item bidder and never overly diffuse them to single-item bidders. The main reason is that some...

Existence of a monotone pure-strategy perfect Bayesian equilibrium is proved for a multistage game of first-price auctions with interbidder resale, with any finite number of ex ante different bidders. Endogenous gains at resale complicate the winner's curse and upset previous fixed-point methods...

A long-standing unsolved problem, often arising from auctions with multidimensional bids, is how to design seller-optimal auctions when bidders' private characteristics ("types") differ in many dimensions. This paper solves the problem, assuming bidder-types stochastically independent across...

The equilibrium price, investment, and capital structure of a regulated firm are examined using a sequential model of regulation. The firm's capital structure is shown to have a significant effect on regulated prices, so that the firm's choice of debt and equity levels refelect regulatory...

We consider a simple two period model where consumers have different switching costs. Before the market opens, there was an incumbent who sold to all consumers. We identify the equilibrium both with Stackelberg and Bertrand competition and show how the presence of low switching cost consumers...

We study the dynamics of competition in a model with network effects, an incumbent and entry. We propose a new way of representing the strategic advantages of incumbency in a static model. We then embed this static analysis in a dynamic framework with heterogeneous consumers. We completely...

We study incumbency advantage in markets with positive consumption externalities. Users of an incumbent platform receive stochastic opportunities to migrate to an entrant. They can accept a migration opportunity or wait for a future opportunity. In some circumstances, users have incentives to...