A semi-uniform-price auction for multiple objects

This paper proposes a semi-uniform payment rule for selling multiple homogeneous objects. Under the proposed auction, all bidders pay a uniform price equal to the highest losing bid, except the bidder with the highest losing bid who, under some circumstances, pays the second highest losing bid. We show that bidders in this auction face an incentive, on the margin, to increase their bids vis-a-vis their bids in a uniform-price auction. This incentive is sufficient to eliminate the zero revenue equilibrium that has been identified in the multiple-object, uniform-price auction literature.