Auctions

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series

By: Timothy P. Hubbard, Harry J. Paarsch

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Although it is among the oldest of market institutions, the auction is ubiquitous in today's economy, used for everything from government procurement to selling advertising on the Internet to course assignment at MIT's Sloan School. Yet beyond the small number of economists who specialize in the subject, few people understand how auctions really work.

This concise, accessible, and engaging book explains both the theory and the practice of auctions. It describes the main auction formats and pricing rules, develops a simple model to explain bidder behavior, and provides a range of real-world examples.

The authors explain what constitutes an auction and how auctions can be modeled as games of asymmetric information - that is, games in which some players know something that other players do not. They characterize behavior in these strategic situations and maintain a focus on the real world by illustrating their discussions with examples that include not just auctions held by eBay and Sotheby's but those used by Google, the US Treasury, TaskRabbit, and charities. Listeners will begin to understand how economists model auctions and how the rules of the auction shape bidder incentives. They will appreciate the role auctions play in our modern economy and understand why these selling mechanisms are so resilient.

©2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (P)2016 Gildan Media LLC

Theoretical Review of Auctions

I bit difficult to listen to because of the theoretical nature of this book. Tables are often mentioned but unavailable to view. Nonetheless an interesting book as theoretical knowledge of auctions is hard to come by

Perfect length and amount of information.

This gave a great overview of all of the basics that went deep enough to understand all of the variables and idiosyncrasies without getting so deep or mathy that I would get lost. Especially in audio format.