Auctioning business licenses to engage in Cournot competition

Abstract

We study auctions for business licenses, where only the winners can participate in Cournot competition. This is an example of a multi-unit auction with endogenous and interdependent values. We compare a pay-as-bid auction and a uniform price auction. Assuming that only the winners’ identity and their payments are announced after the auction, the former auction is advantageous in terms of auction revenue, and the latter is advantageous in terms of consumer surplus.