A contest architecture specifies how the prize sum is split among several prizes, and how the contestants (who are here privately informed about their abilities) are split among several sub-contests. We compare the performance of such schemes to that of grand winner-take-all contests from the...

An indivisible good can be consumed by one of several agents. The consumption involves identity-dependent externalities to non-consumers. Resale markets for such goods are analyzed in various institutional settings where agents cannot commit to future actions. We address the following questions:...

We study auctions for an invisible object. The outcome of the auction influences the future interaction among agents. The impact of that interaction on agent's is assumed to be a function of the agent's valuations. While agent's i valuation is private information to i, the other valuations are...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), considered by some to be the greatest German writer, employed a number of sophisticated strategies in his dealings with publishers. None of them is as intriguing as the one appearing in Goethe's letter, dated January 16, 1797, to the publisher Vieweg...

We survey the recent European UMTS license auctions and compare their outcomes with the predictions of a simple model that emphasizes future market structure as a main determinant of valuations for licenses. Since the main goal of most spectrum allocation procedures is economic efficiency, and...