Simultaneous Ascending Auction

The simultaneous ascending auction has proved to be a successful method of auctioning many related items. Simultaneous sale and ascending bids enable price discovery, which helps bidders build desirable packages of items. Although package bids are not allowed, the auction format does handle mild complementarities well. I examine the auction design and its performance in practice.Auctions, Ascending Auctions, Market Design

Online Auctions

The economic literature on online auctions is rapidly growing because of the enormous amount of freely available field data. Moreover, numerous innovations in auction-design features on platforms such as eBay have created excellent research opportunities. In this article, we survey the theoretical, empirical, and experimental research on bidder strategies (including the timing of bids and winner's-curse effects) and seller strategies (including reserve-price policies and the use of buy-now options) in online auctions, as well as some of the literature dealing with online-auction design (including stopping rules and multi-object pricing rules).

Auctions: Theory and Practice

Governments use them to sell everything from oilfields to pollution permits, and to privatize companies; consumers rely on them to buy baseball tickets and hotel rooms, and economic theorists employ them to explain booms and busts. Auctions make up many of the world's most important markets; and this book describes how auction theory has also become an invaluable tool for understanding economics. Auctions: Theory and Practice provides a non-technical introduction to auction theory, and emphasises its practical application. Although there are many extremely successful auction markets, there have also been some notable fiascos, and Klemperer provides many examples. He discusses the successes and failures of the one-hundred-billion dollar "third-generation" mobile-phone license auctions; he, jointly with Ken Binmore, designed the first of these. Klemperer also demonstrates the surprising power of auction theory to explain seemingly unconnected issues such as the intensity of different forms of industrial competition, the costs of litigation, and even stock trading 'frenzies' and financial crashes. Engagingly written, the book makes the subject exciting not only to economics students but to anyone interested in auctions and their role in economics.markets, industrial competition, litigation, stock trading, financial crashes

Competition Between Auctions

Even though auctions are capturing an increasing share of commerce, they are typically treated in the theoretical economics literature as isolated. That is, an auction is typically treated as a single seller facing multiple buyers or as a single buyer facing multiple sellers. In this paper, we review the state of the art of competition between auctions. We consider three different types of competition: competition between auctions, competition between formats, and competition between auctioneers vying for auction traffic. We highlight the newest experimental, statistical and analytical methods in the analysis of competition between auctions.auctions, bidding, competition, auction formats, auction houses

The Role of Auctions in Allocating Public Resources

This paper provides an economic framework within which to consider the effectiveness and limitations of auction markets. The paper looks at the use of auctions as a policy instrument and the effects of auction design on consumer interests, the efficient allocation of resources, and industry competitiveness.Australia; Research; Ascending-bid auction; Auctions; Bidders; Conservation funds; Descending-bid auction; Dutch auction; English auction; Environmental Management; First-price sealed-bid auction; Infrastructure; Markets; Oral auction; Outcry auction; Pollutant emission permits; Power supply contracts; Public resources; Radio- spectrum; Second-price sealed-bid auction Spectrum licences; Vickrey auction; Water rights;

Intimidation or Impatience? Jump Bidding in On-line Ascending Automobile Auctions

We run a large field experiment with an online company specializing in selling used automobiles via ascending auctions. We manipulate experimentally the maximum amount which bidders can bid above the current standing price, thus affecting the ease with which bidders can engage in jump bidding. We test between the intimidation vs. costly bidding hypotheses of jump bidding by looking at the effect of these jump-bidding restrictions on average seller revenue. We find evidence consistent with costly bidding in one market (Texas), but intimidation in the other market (New York). This difference in findings between the two markets appears partly attributable to the more prominent presence of sellers who are car dealers in the Texas market.

Nonparametric Identification and Estimation of Multi-Unit, Sequential, Oral, Ascending-Price Auctions With Asymmetric Bidders

Within the independent private-values paradigm, we derive the data-generating process of the winning bid for the last unit sold at multi-unit sequential English auctions when bidder valuations are draws from different distributions; i.e., in the presence of asymmetries. When the identity of the winner as well as the number of units won by each bidder in previous stages of the auction are observed, we demonstrate nonparametric identification and then propose two estimation strategies, one based on the empirical distribution function of winning bids for the last unit sold and the other based on approximation methods using orthogonal polynomials. We apply our methods to daily data from fish auctions held in Grenå, Denmark. For single-unit supply, we use our estimates to compare the revenues a seller could expect to earn were a Dutch auction employed instead.Asymmetric, Multi-unit, Sequential, Oral, Ascending-price fish auctions, Dutch auctions, Nonparametric identification and estimation