Auctions: Theory and Applications

This paper assesses alternative auction techniques for pricing and allocating various financial instruments, such as government securities, central bank refinance credit, and foreign exchange. Before recommending appropriate formats for auctioning these items, the paper discusses basic auction formats, assessing the advantages and disadvantages of each, based on the existing, mostly theoretical, literature. It is noted that auction techniques can be usefully employed for a broad range of items and that their application is of particular relevance to the impetus in many parts of the world toward establishing market-oriented economies.