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 …

A central question in economics is understanding the difficulties that parties have in
reaching mutually beneficial agreements. Informational differences provide an appealing …

ONE PARTY TO AN EXCHANGE often knows something relevant to the transaction that the
other party does not know. Such asymmetries of information are pervasive in economic …

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 …

A double auction mechanism that provides dominant strategies for both buyers and sellers is
analyzed. This mechanism satisfies the 1 n convergence to efficiency of the buyer's bid …

The mechanism design literature assumes too much common knowledge of the environment
among the players and planner. We relax this assumption by studying mechanism design on …

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 …

Three topics are discussed. The first is a research program to establish whether the familiar
trading rules, such as sealed-bid and oral double auctions, are incentive efficient over a …

Several partners jointly own an asset that may be traded among them. Each partner has a
valuation for the asset; the valuations are known privately and drawn independently from a …

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 …