Three essays on auctions and market structure

The dissertation by Pavel Nazartsev is titled "Three Essays on Auctions and Market Structure". It was written under the guidance of the advisor, Professor Frank Gollop, and two readers Professors Ingela Alger and Richard Tresch (all Economics Department, Boston College).; The dissertation analyzes issues of auction entry and collusion while condusting auctions. For context it is applied to the U.S. wireless telecommunications industry.; The first essay is a theoretical analysis of auction entry while entrants face a two-step procedure in obtaining their operators' licenses in the wireless telecommunications market. The essays provides some insights into the effect of a critical input---the airwave spectrum---being vital for two non-competing markets simultaneously. The results indicate that the two-step procedure should not discourage the entry by potential bidders, but the resource constraints can lead to a sub-optimal allocation of the resource.; The second essay is an empirical analysis of auction entry as a function of market concentration. The results show that market concentration by itself has no significant effect on auction entry, while having a share in the market increases the probability of entry by the owner of such share.; The third essay analyses empirically the direct and reputation effects of auction signaling and retaliation. The results obtained indicate that while the direct effect is insignificant, the reputation of being an aggressive and retaliating bidder has a pronounced effect of lowering the price the retaliating bidder payed for the auctioned object.