Discussion Paper

A “Reference Price Auction” to Buy or Sell Different Assets Simultaneously

Abstract: In finance, auctions are often conducted to buy or sell simultaneously various assets with very different characteristics. These auctions raise a number of challenges that cannot always be addressed with standard auction designs. In this post, I discuss an alternative design—the “reference price auction”—and present evidence that it may dominate other methods often implemented in practice.

Keywords: auction design; procurement auctions; laboratory experiments;

JEL Classification: G1;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Part of Series: Liberty Street Economics

Publication Date: 2013-01-02

Number: 20130102