The Design of Multidimensional Auctions

Procurement auctions usually require the bid to specify several characteristics of the contract to be fulfilled. In this article I study the design of such mechanisms, allowing for a special case of correlation of the firm's costs. I describe the properties of optimal mechanisms and study the design of multidimensional auctions. Contrary to the independent-costs model, to implement the optimal outcome the procurer will need to use a two-stage auction: in the first stage the procurer selects one firm; in the second stage he bargains to readjust the level of quality to be provided.

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