Auction & Market Design

General Director:
Kenneth J. Arrow, Stanford University

Co-director:
Motty Perry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

 

The auction is one of the oldest forms of economic transaction and remains one of its most common modes. In well-organized markets, transactions take the form of two-sided auctions. The late Nobel laureate William Vickrey launched the study of alternative forms of auctions and their efficiencies and incentives for truthful revelation of values. This study has become one of the major areas of research. It has become even more important with the growing privatization of government-owned industries; auctions are a frequently used method for accomplishing the change of ownership. More broadly, the design of markets to permit competition in what were formerly publicly-owned or regulated industries has become a new and important application related to the theory of auctions.

 

Speakers:

Matthew O. Jackson, California Insitute of Technology
John McMillan, University of California at San Diego
Paul Milgrom, Stanford University
Charles Plott, California Institute of Technology
Robert A. Porter, Northwestern University

With the support of the Center for the Study of Rationality and the Koret Foundation