This paper characterizes the optimal first-price auction (FPA) and second-price auction (SPA) for selling rights, contracts, or licenses that involve ensuing payoff uncertainty for the winning bidder. The distribution of the random payoff is common knowledge, except that bidders have private...

We analyze sequential Dutch and Vickrey auctions where risk averse, or risk preferring, bidders may have heterogeneous risk exposures. We derive and characterize a pure strategy equilibrium of both auctions for arbitrary number of identical objects. A sufficient, and to certain extent necessary,...

We establish conditions under which an English auction for an indivisible risky asset has an efficient ex post equilibrium when the bidders are heterogeneous in both their exposures to, and their attitudes toward, the ensuing risk the asset will generate for the winning bidder. Each bidder's...

Received auction theory prescribes that a reserve price which maximizes expected profit should be no less than the seller's own value for the auctioned object. In contrast, a common empirical observation is that many auctions have reserve prices set below sellers' values, even at zero. This...