COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS
AT YALE UNIVERSITY

Box 208281
New Haven, CT 06520-8281

COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 496 and 496R

"Auctions and Bidding Models: A Survey"

Richard Engelbrecht-Wiggans

1979

Auctions and bidding models are attracting an ever increasing amount of attention. The Stark and Rothkopf (1977) bibliography includes approximately 500 papers on the subject; additional work has been reported since the bibliography was compiled. This paper presents a general framework for classifying and describing various auctions and bidding models, and surveys the major results of the literature in terms of this framework.