The Federal Communications Commission held its first auction of radio spectrum at the Nationwide Narrowband PCS Auction in July 1994. The simultaneous multiple-round auction, which lasted five days, was an ascending bid auction in which all licenses were offered simultaneously. This paper describes the auction rules and how bidders prepared for the auction. The full history of bidding is presented. Several questions for auction theory are discussed. In the end, the government collected $617 million for ten licenses. The auction was viewed by all as a huge success-an excellent example of bringing economic theory to bear on practical problems of allocating scarce resources.
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Paper provided by University of Maryland, Department of Economics - Peter Cramton in its series Papers of Peter Cramton with number
95jems.
Length: 77 pages Date of creation: 1995 Date of revision:
09 Jun 1998 Publication status: Published in Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 4:2, Summer 1995, pages 267-343. Handle: RePEc:pcc:pccumd:95jems
Contact details of provider: Postal: Economics Department, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7211 Phone: (202) 318-0520 Fax: (202) 318-0520 Web page: http://www.cramton.umd.edu
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Find related papers by JEL classification: D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Auctions L96 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Telecommunications
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Roth, Alvin E. & Sotomayor, Marilda, 1992.
"Two-sided matching,"
Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,
in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 16, pages 485-541
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Demange, Gabrielle & Gale, David & Sotomayor, Marilda, 1986.
"Multi-Item Auctions,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 863-72, August.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
McAfee, R Preston & McMillan, John, 1992.
"Bidding Rings,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 579-99, June.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
McAfee, R. Preston & McMillan, John., 1990.
"Bidding Rings,"
Working Papers
726, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
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Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.
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