Frontiers in spectrum auction design

Spectrum auction design has seen number innovations in the recent years. Regulators have used various types of combinatorial auction formats including simple ascending combinatorial clock auctions and first-price sealed-bid combinatorial auctions. The Simultaneous Multi-Round Auction (SMRA) and the two-stage Combinatorial Clock Auction (CCA) are the most wide-spread auction formats for spectrum sales to date. We provide an accessible overview of strategic problems in these auction formats and summarize research challenges in this field for a broader audience of readers in industrial organization.