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 …

This paper reviews the part played by economists in organising the British third‐generation
mobile‐phone licence auction that concluded on 27 April 2000. It raised£ 22½ billion ($34 …

The Theory of Industrial Organization is the first primary text to treat the new industrial
organization at the advanced-undergraduate and graduate level. Rigorously analytical and …

February 2000 was a stressful month for me: the UK 3G auction was about to begin. For over
two years I had been working with the UK government to design the world's first auction of …

The most important issues in auction design are the traditional concerns of competition
policy-preventing collusive, predatory, and entry-deterring behavior. Ascending and uniform …

Venture capitalists often hold extensive control rights over entrepreneurial companies,
including the right to fire entrepreneurs. This article examines why, and under what …

We show that the seller's problem in devising an optimal auction is virtually identical to the
monopolist's problem in third-degree price discrimination. More generally, many of the …

Before the receivers choose their actions, the sender may make claims about the state s.
These claims do not directly affect payoffs: they are cheap talk. That is, they are not …

BARGAINING is usually interpreted as the process of arriving at mutual agreement on the
provisions of a contract. In the economic realm, the prototype is exchange between a seller …

A yes or no decision must be made about some issue. All agents must agree. The “Coase
Theorem” asserts that the efficient outcome will always result. Suppose the value (positive or …