License Auctions and Market Structure

Philippe Jehiel () and Benny Moldovanu ()

No 01-21, Papers from Sonderforschungsbreich 504

Abstract: We analyze the interplay between license auctions and market structure in a model with several incumbents and several potential entrants. The focus is on the competitiveness induced by the number of auctioned licenses. Moreover, we study how the auction format affects the incentives for explicit or tacit collusion among incumbents. A crucial role is played by the relation between the number of incumbents and the number of licenses. If the number of incumbents is greater than the number of new licenses, we show that auctioning more licenses need not result in greater competitiveness. If the number of licenses exceeds the number of incumbents, we display plausible conditions under which all incumbents get a license. Finally, we suggest a positive role for some auction formats in which the number of licenses is endogenously determined at the auction. We illustrate some results with examples drawn from European license auctions for 3G mobile telephony.

Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/2805/1/dp01_21.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: License Auctions and Market Structure (2006)
Working Paper: License auctions and market structure (2006)
Working Paper: License Auctions and Market Structure (2000)
Working Paper: License Auctions and Market Structure (2000)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mnh:spaper:2805

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from Sonderforschungsbreich 504 Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Katharina Rautenberg ().