Auctions, normally considered as devices facilitating trade, also provide a way to probe mechanisms governing one's valuation of some good or action. One of the most intriguing phenomena in auction behavior is the winner's curse --- the strong tendency of participants to bid more than rational...

There is a voluminous theoretical literature on sealed high-bid auctions (auctions in which bids are sealed and the high bidder pays his bid). See for example, Vickrey (1961), Myerson (1981), Riley and Samuelson (1981), Milgrom and Weber (1982), Mathews (1983), Maskin and Riley (1984),...

This article identifies biases in market portfolios of parallel research projects arising from the noncongruence of social goals and private aspirations, occasioned by those circumstances where the market rewards only the winner and where the winner is awarded the entire social surplus. It is...