The Economic Theory of Auctions

This major two volume collection presents some of the most influential theoretical and empirical papers on the economic theory of auctions.Auction theory has been the basis of fundamental theoretical work in industrial economics, public economics, labour economics and finance, and has helped the understanding of price formation in markets. There has recently been an explosion of interest in its practical applications, especially in organising the sale of government assets (for example, treasury bonds, radio spectrum licenses, and firms to be privatised) and in developing new markets for electricity and transport. Because auctions are such simple and well defined environments, they provide a valuable testing ground for economic theory that has been increasingly exploited in empirical work.

The book will also include important previously unpublished papers by P.R. Milgrom, R. Weber and A. Ortega-Reichert, and other hard-to-find papers by W. Vickery and others.