This paper provides an elementary, non-technical, survey of auction theory, by introducing and describing some of the critical papers in the subject. (The most important of these are reproduced in a companion book, The Economic Theory of Auctions, Paul Klemperer (ed.), Edward Elgar (pub.), forthcoming.) We begin with the most fundamental concepts, and then introduce the basic analysis of optimal auctions, the revenue equivalence theorem, and marginal revenues. Subsequent sections address risk-aversion, affiliation, asymmetries, entry, collusion, multi-unit auctions, double auctions, royalties, incentive contracts, and other topics. Appendices contain technical details, some simple worked examples, and a bibliography for each section.

Our objective in this paper is to review what economists have said about incentive schemes to promote R&D, including intellectual property. While we focus on environments in which other forms of protection are not available, we note that other protections can obviate the need for any formal reward system. In Section II, we compare intellectual property to alternative incentive schemes. In Section III we review optimal design issues for intellectual property, especially the question of patent breadth, and in Section IV we turn to the special problems that arise when innovation is cumulative. In Section V, we summarize the arguments for and against intellectual property. We comment on whether the design recommendations of economists can actually be implemented, and argue that IP regimes should be designed so that the subject matter of each one has relatively homogeneous needs for protection.

The structure of problem-solving knowledge and the structure of organisations

This paper studies the exchange of information between two principals who contract sequentially with the same agent, as in the case of a buyer who purchases from multiple sellers. We show that when (a) the upstream principal is not personally interested in the downstream level of trade, (b) the agent’s valuations are positively correlated, and (c) preferences in the downstream relationship are separable, then it is optimal for the upstream principal to offer the agent full privacy. On the contrary, when any of these conditions is violated, there exist preferences for which disclosure is strictly optimal, even if the downstream principal does not pay for the information. We also examine the effects of disclosure on welfare and show that it does not necessarily reduce the agent’s surplus in the two relationships and in some cases may even yield a Pareto improvement.

The paper analyzes repeated contract negotiations involving the same buyer and seller where the contracts are linked because the buyer has persistent (but not fully permanent) private information. (The main application is labor contracts, where the employer has private information about the value of labor services sold by the union). The size of the surplus being divided is specified as a two-state Markov chain with transitions that are synchronized with contract negotiation dates. Equilibrium involves information cycles triggered by the success or failure of aggressive demands made by the seller. A successful demand induces the seller to again make an aggressive demand in the next negotiation, because the buyer’s acceptance reveals that the current surplus is large, and because there is persistence in the Markov chain generating the surplus. Rejection of an aggressive demand, on the other hand, leads the seller to be pessimistic about the size of the surplus in the next contract, so the seller makes a "soft " offer that is sure to be accepted. Then, several contracts later, the Markov chain has made enough transitions to make the seller optimistic enough to again make an aggressive demand, and the result of this demand re-starts the information cycle. An interesting feature of this cycle is that the soft price is not constant, but declines as the cycle continues, so as to offset the buyer’s option value of re-starting the cycle when the current state is bad. An explicit

: We report experimental results on the importance of information disclosure policy in first-price sealed-bid auctions. Interaction takes place in ten periods according to a random matching protocol, and we control the level of information feedback bidders receive after each period. When bidders are informed about the losing bids in previous periods, prices are higher than the theoretical prediction. However, when this information is not revealed the bidding becomes more competitive, and the bids come close to the theoretical prediction. We suggest that a signaling phenomenon may be important for explaining these results. JEL codes: C92, D44, L15 Keywords: First-price auctions, experiment, information disclosure, signaling Acknowledgments: We thank Gary Charness, Eric van Damme, David Grether, and Reinhard Selten for very helpful comments, and the Swedish Competition Authority for financial support. We started this research while we were both at the CentER for Economic Research at T...

This paper extends the theory of non-cash auctions by considering the revenue and efficiency of using different securities. Research on bankruptcy and privatization suggests using non-cash auctions to increase cash-constrained bidder participation. We examine this proposal and demonstrate that securities may lead to higher revenue. However, bidders pool unless bids include debt, which results in possible repossession by the seller. This suggests all-equity outcomes are unlikely and explains the high debt of reorganized firms. Securities also inefficiently determine bidders ’ incentive contracts and the firm’s capital structure. Therefore, we recommend a new cash auction for an incentive contract. TWO IMPORTANT PAPERS in the legal literature, Baird ~1986! and Jackson ~1986!, suggest that a bankrupt firm’s assets should be auctioned off. Their rationale is that a cash auction is an efficient procedure for selling assets and the role of bankruptcy procedures is not to reallocate claims but rather to allow for efficient liquidation. 1

In many countries throughout the world, regulators are struggling to determine whether and how to introduce competition into regulated industries. This essay examines the complexities involved in the liberalization process. While stressing the importance of case-specific analyses, this essay distinguishes liberalization policies that generally are procompetitive from corresponding anticompetitive liberalization policies.

This paper examines the intricacies associated with the design of revenue-maximizing mechanisms for a monopolist who expects her buyers to resell. We consider two cases: resale to a third party who does not participate in the primary market and inter-bidder resale, where the winner resells to the losers. To influence the resale outcome, the monopolist must design an allocation rule and a disclosure policy that optimally fashion the beliefs of the participants in the secondary market. Our results show that the revenue-maximizing mechanism may require a stochastic selling procedure and a disclosure policy richer than the simple announcement of the decision to sell to a particular buyer.

In public procurement, social welfare often depends on how quickly the good is delivered. A leading example is highway construction, where slow completion inflicts a negative externality on commuters. In response, highway departments award some contracts using scoring auctions, which give contractors explicit incentives for accelerated delivery. We characterize efficient design of these mechanisms. We then gather an extensive dataset of highway projects awarded by the California Department of Transportation between 2003 and 2008. By comparing otherwise similar contracts, we show that where the scoring design was used, contracts were completed 30-40 % faster and the welfare gains to commuters exceeded the increase in procurement costs. Using a structural model that endogenizes participation and bidding, we estimate that the counterfactual welfare gain from switching all contracts from the standard design to the efficient A+B design is nearly 22 % of the total contract value ($1.14 billion). I