We usually assume increases in supply, allocation by rationing, and exclusion of potential buyers will never raise prices. But all of these activities raise the expected price in an important set of cases when common-value assets are sold. Furthermore, when we make the assumptions needed to rule...

We use a classroom game, the Wallet Game, to show that slight asymmetries between bidders can have very large effects on prices in standard ascending (i.e. English) auctions of common-values objects. Examples of small asymmetries are a small value advantage for one bidder or a small ownership of...