This paper analyzes optimal auction design when delivery of supply is uncertain. We consider a buyer facing multiple potential suppliers, each having an associated (exogenous) reliability that quantifies its risk of supply failure. We design optimal mechanisms that depend on the buyer's level of...

In this paper we study two reverse auction formats in a single period setting, the sealed pay-as-bid and the open format, when suppliers are capacity constrained. In the pay-as-bid format we characterize the asymmetric bidding equilibrium for the case of two suppliers with uniformly distributed...

In dynamic markets where cost of components changes fast, buyers typically auction off regular short-term contracts to fully leverage supplier competition in each period to continuously source from the lowest-cost supplier. However, too much competition through short-term contracts does not...

We consider sealed and open-bid total-cost procurement auctions where two attributes are used for contract award decisions: price, which is bid by the supplier; and a fixed quality adjustment cost, which is included by the buyer to capture non-price factors such as a supplier's quality and...

A buyer seeking to outsource production may be able to find ways to reduce a potential supplier's cost, e.g., by suggesting improvements to the supplier's proposed production methods. We study how a buyer could use such "cost reduction investigations" by proposing a three-step supplier selection...