Market Design

Full course description

In order to satisfy the Econometrics & OR curriculum, you have to choose two of the
courses EBC2091, EBC2120, EBC2121, EBC2122 in period 4.

The course is divided into three parts. Part (I) deals with fundamental results on single-item auctions under strong assumptions about the bidders and their preferences. It should not be a surprise that this classical theory is by far not sufficient when designing auctions for real applications. For example, in frequency auctions, like the UMTS auctions in Europe, or in reverse auctions used in procurement, many items are sold at the same time. Furthermore, we may face problems like the winner's curse when there is uncertainty about the valuation of the items sold in an auction. Part (II) gives a detailed insight in such issues and how they can be dealt with. In Part (III), theoretical insights from part (I) and (II) are applied to particular markets for which auctions have been proposed, or are already used. We broaden our knowledge thereby by investigating the interaction between auction design and specific properties of the market. Examples of markets are electric power, highway franchising, emission rights, and listings in online search engines. Each student writes a final paper about one of these markets, in which they make proposals for an auction design in these markets.