Job Market Paper Competing Auctioneers ∗

We study a model where multiple sellers with limited supply strategically choose both the price formation rule and the allocation rule. We show that inefficiency in this setting arises both because sellers withhold the good and because they sell to lower valuation buyers despite the presence of higher valuation buyers. This contrasts with the findings of the literatures on monopolistic and competing sellers, which suggest that the only form of inefficiency that arises is from sellers choosing to withhold the good. Both types of inefficiencies vanish as the number of sellers in the market grow large: it is an equilibrium for all sellers to offer efficient mechanisms in the limit.