CentER

Sander Onderstal

Abstract:
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.