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 …

A family of ascending package auction models is introduced in which bidders may
determine their own packages on which to bid. In the proxy auction (revelation game) …

The paper studies contracting between one principal and N agents in the presence of
multilateral externalities. When the principal commits to publicly observed bilateral contracts …

The paper provides a first analysis of market jump starting and its two-way interaction
between mechanism design and participation constraints. The government optimally …

This paper characterizes the optimal contract offered by an uninformed principal to an
informed agent when the latter's reservation utility depends on his type. The informational …

We study efficient, Bayes‐Nash incentive compatible mechanisms in a social choice setting
that allows for informational and allocative externalities. We show that such mechanisms …

We usually assume that increases in supply, allocation by rationing, and exclusion of
potential buyers reduce prices. But all these activities raise the expected price in an …

We study an auction whose outcome influences the future interaction among agents. The
impact of that interaction on agent i is assumed to be a function of all agents' types (which …

We show that standard winner-pay auctions are inept fund-raising mechanisms because of
the positive externality bidders forgo if they top another's high bid. Revenues are …