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Auction

Auctions are publicly seen in several contexts: in the antique business, where besides being an opportunity for trade they also serve as social occasions and entertainment; in the sale of collectibles such as stamps, coins, classic cars, and fine art; in thoroughbred horseracing, where yearling horses are commonly auctioned off; and in legal contexts where forced auctions occur, as when one's farm or house is sold at auction on the courthouse steps.

Although less publicly visible, the most economically important auctions are those in which the bidders are businesses or corporations. Examples of this type of auction include:

• spectrum auctions, in which companies purchase licenses to use portions of the electromagnetic spectrum for communications (for cell phone networks, for example.)
• timber auctions, in which companies purchase licenses to log on government land.
• electricity auctions, in which large-scale generators and consumers of electricity bid on generating contracts.
• procurement auctions, in which companies submit bids on a government contract. In this situation the auction is reversed and the winner will be the company that submits the lowest bid to perform the work.
• environmental auctions, in which companies bid for licenses to avoid being required to decrease their environmental impact.
• debt auctions, in which governments sell debt instruments, such as bonds, to investors. The auction is usually sealed and the uniform price paid by the investors is typically the best non-winning bid. In most cases, investors can also place so called non-competive bids which indicates an interest to purchase the debt instrument at the resulting price, whatever it may be.

The world's two largest auction houses are Christie's and Sotheby's. The world's largest online auction site is eBay.

Auction catalogs are frequently printed and distributed before auctions of rare and/or collectible items; these catalogs may be very elaborate works, with considerable details about the items being auctioned.

Types of Auctions

• English auction: In this type of auction participants bid openly against one another, with each bid being higher than the previous bid. The auction ends when no participant is willing to bid further, or when a pre-determined "buy-out" price is reached, at which point the highest bidder pays the price. The seller may set a 'reserve' price and if the auctioneer fails to raise a bid higher than this reserve the sale may not go ahead.

• Dutch auction: In the traditional Dutch auction the auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer's price. That participant pays the last announced price. This type of auction is convenient when it is important to auction goods quickly, since a sale never requires more than one bid. The Dutch auction is named for its best known example, the Dutch tulip auctions. "Dutch auction" can also be used to describe online auctions where several identical goods are sold simultaneously to an equal number of high bidders.

• Sealed first-price auction: In this type of auction all bidders simultaneously submit bids in such a way that no bidder knows the bid of any other participant. The highest bidder pays the price he submitted.

• Sealed second-price auction, also known as a Vickrey auction: This is identical to the sealed first-price auction, except the winning bidder pays the second highest bid rather than his own. Both the English and the second-price sealed-bid auctions will theoretically lead to the bidder's bidding up to (or submitting as a sealed bid) their true valuation of the item.

• Silent auction: Often used in charity events. In this type of auction, items are displayed. Bidders can write a bid on a piece of paper located near the item. They may or may not know what the other people are bidding, which closes after a pre-set period of time. The highest bidder pays the price submitted.

Bidders in the traditional Dutch auction and sealed first-price auction will tend to underbid what they believe the item is truly worth in hopes of getting the item for less, or in order to avoid the winner's curse. This behavior is known as bid shading. These two auctions are also theoretically equivalent, but in practice Dutch auctions will produce less revenue than sealed first-price auctions (one of the important results of Experimental economics)

Work in the theory of auctions contributed to Vickrey's 1996 Bank of Sweden Prize.

See also

• winner's curse
• business model
• online auction business model
• Estate sale

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