Industrial Organization Commons^™

We show the effects of product differentiation and product market competition on technology licensing by an outside innovator. For a certain range of product differentiation, both the innovator and the society prefer royalty licensing compared to auction (or fixed-fee), irrespective of Cournot and Bertrand competition, if the number of potential licensees is sufficiently large. Hence, for such a range of product differentiation, neither the innovator nor the antitrust authority requires information about the type of product market competition in preferring the type of the licensing contract.

This paper examines situations in which a seller might make a second chance (take-it-or-leave-it) offer to a non-winning bidder at a price equal to their bid at auction. This study is motivated by the take-it-or-leave-it second chance offer rules used by eBay and a number of state procurement agencies. Equilibrium bidder behavior is determined for IPV sealed bid first price, second price, English, and Vickrey auctions when a second chance offer will be made with an exogenous probability p. In all but the Vickrey auction (which elicits the dominant strategy of bidding one’s value) equilibrium bids are lower than if …