Environmental markets have several institutional features that provide a new context for the use of auctions and which have not been studied previously. This paper reports on laboratory experiments testing three auction forms: uniform and discriminatory price sealed bid auctions and an ascending...

Objective – This chapter examines the performance of the market to discover efficient equilibrium under alternative auction designs. Background – Auctions are increasingly being used to allocate emissions allowances (“permits”) for cap and trade and common-pool resource management...

Multi-unit ascending auctions allow for equilibria in which bidders strategically reduce their demand and split the market at low prices. At the same time, they allow for preemptive bidding by incumbent bidders in a coordinated attempt to exclude entrants from the market. We consider an...