Inefficiency of Collusion at English Auctions
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Giuseppe Lopomo
In its attempts to deter and prosecute big rigging, U.S. antitrust authorities have focused on sealed-bid procurements, rather than on ascending-bid auctions. One possible justification for this focus is the idea, supported by the existing theoretical literature, that collusion creates inefficiency at sealed-bid auctions, but not at ascending-bid auctions. We show when there is no pre-auction communication and the collusive mechanism satisfies ex-post budget balance, collusion does affect efficiency. In particular, any collusive mechanism that increases cartel members' expected payoffs relative to non-cooperative play results in inefficiency either in the allocation among cartel members or in the allocation between cartel and non-cartel bidders, or both.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Advances Article
- Asymmetric Vertical Integration
- Shocks and Business Cycles
- Identification of Preferences from Market Data
- On the Right-of-First-Refusal
- Denial of Death and Economic Behavior
- Contributions Article
- Utility Equivalence in Auctions
- Pollution Taxes for Monopolistically Competitive Firms
- On the Welfare Evaluation of Income and Opportunity
- Inefficiency of Collusion at English Auctions
- Limited Attention as the Bound on Rationality
- Topics Article
- Upward and Downward Limit Pricing: The Role of Post-Entry Competition
- Anonymous Bidding and Revenue Maximization
- Citizen Candidacy With Asymmetric Information
- Likely Events and Possible States
