The Combinatorial Multi-Round Ascending Auction
Research Seminars: Virtual Market Design SeminarThe Combinatorial Multi-Round Ascending Auction (CMRA) is a new auction format which has already been used in several recent European spectrum auctions. The authors characterize equilibria that feature auction-specific forms of truthful bidding, demand expansion, and (riskless) demand reduction for settings in which bidders have either decreasing or non-decreasing marginal values. Overall, their results suggest that the CMRA might be an attractive auction design in the presence of highly complementary goods on sale. They discuss to what extent our theory is consistent with outcomes data in Danish spectrum auctions and how their predictions can be tested using bidding data.