We develop a model of a sealed-bid first-price auction where the auctioneer acting on behalf of the seller may be involved in corruption. She is offered a bribe from one of the participants and can allow him to resubmit his bid. We show that the seller can often offer the auctioneer a...

We consider multi-stage elimination contests, where agents efforts at different stages generate some output for the organizers. Depending on the output function we characterize the optimal prize structure of the tournament and show that it is almost efficient. We have found that in some cases...

The contest entails one prize and n potential bidders. Each bidder receives a signal about the value of the prize and has a signal-dependent probability of participation. All bidders bear a cost of bidding that is an increasing function of their bids. It is shown that the contest organizer...

The auction designer has one favorite among bidders and maximizes hisutility by choosing an auction plan, i.e., choosing the auction format conditionalon the favorite's value. I show that the designer can favor one of the bidderseven if favoritism within an auction is not allowed. In this case,...