Empirical Work on Auctions of Multiple Objects

Abundant data has led to new opportunities for empirical auctions research in recent years, with much of the newest work on auctions of multiple objects, including: (i) auctions of ranked objects (such as sponsored-search ads), (ii) auctions of identical objects (such as Treasury bonds), and (iii) auctions of dissimilar objects (such as FCC spectrum licenses). This paper surveys recent developments in the empirical analysis of such auctions. ∗Hortaçsu is at the Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60613. E-mail: [email protected]. McAdams is at the Fuqua School of Business and the Economics Department, Duke University. Email: [email protected].