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What are auctions and what is auction theory? -- Why study auction theory? -- The economics behind auctions -- Some standard results in auction theory -- Auctions: some real-life experiences -- Auctions in India -- Other applications of auction theory.

Using a rich sample of Canadian government securities auctions, we estimate the structural parameters of a share-auction model accounting for asymmetries across bidders. We find little evidence of asymmetries between participants at Canadian government nominal bond auctions. A counter-factual analysis also suggests that given the assumptions underlying the model used, including that participation and quality of information are exogenous, the discriminatory format currently in place is superior to the uniform-price format in terms of the revenue generated by the Canadian government. Both auction formats, however, are found, under the same assumptions, to be dominated by the so-called Spanish auction" format.

Ronald Dworkin's argument for resource egalitarianism has as its centerpiece a thought experiment involving a group of shipwreck survivors washed ashore on an uninhabited island, who decide to divide up all of the resources on the island equally using a competitive auction. Unfortunately, Dworkin misunderstands how the auction mechanism works, and so misinterprets its significance for egalitarian political philosophy. First, he makes it seem as though there is a conceptual connection between the 'envy-freeness' standard and the auction, when in fact there is none. Second, he fails to appreciate how idealized the conditions are that must be satisfied in order for his results to obtain. This leads him to draw practical conclusions from the thought experiment that do not follow, such as his claim that the principle of equality generates a presumption in favor of the market as a mechanism for the distribution of resources. The result is that Dworkin saddles resource egalitarianism with a set of commitments that are, in fact, inessential to that view.

AbstractWe study platform markets in which agents arrive gradually, experience changes to their preferences over time, and are frequently re‐matched. We introduce simple auctions specifically designed for such markets. Upon joining, agents select a status that determines the weight assigned to their future bids. Each match is then assigned a score that depends on the agents' reciprocal bids and status. The matches maximizing the sum of the bilateral scores are implemented. Under certain conditions, such auctions maximize profits, welfare, or a combination of the two. We use the results to shed light on the distortions due to platforms' market power.

This paper provides an empirical analysis of outcomes from Swedish procurement auctions given award criterion and auction format. The auctions are single unit first-price sealed bid auctions or its simultaneous counterpart, and contracts can be awarded to lowest bidder or in accordance with qualitative criteria. The empirical results provide no evidence of differences in winning bids depending on the auction format. The award rule on the other hand matters, a horizontal comparison show higher winning bids on contracts awarded to some other but the lowest bidder. The effect of bidder interaction and bidder identity is also considered. ; Published in Rivista di Politica Economica, ISSN 0035-6468 2006 Vol 96 no 1-2 pp 91-116. Changesmay have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication.

This thesis is a collection of six papers in auction theory, with several economic applications, both to real life auctions and to other economic phenomena. In the introduction to the thesis, Onderstal argues why auction theory is an important branch of economic theory, and discusses several interesting results that emerge from auction theory. The first paper is about situations in which the outcome of an auction determines the market structure of a consumer market. The Dutch petrol market is used as an illustration for this model. The second and the third papers, both motivated by the UMTS auctions that took place in Europe, consider auctions in which losing bidders obtain financial externalities from the winner. The fourth paper deals with the exposure problem in auctions, and is applied to the Dutch DCS-1800 auction. The fifth paper interprests political lobbying as an "all-pay auction" and considers situations in which the government maximizes social welfare by completely banning lobbying. Finally, the sixth paper constructs mechanisms that are optimal from the bidders' point of view, with applications to lobbying, advertising, political campaigns, and auctions.