Mechanism design is a big topic in microeconomics which covers auction design: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechan

Mechanism design is a big topic in microeconomics which covers auction design: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design There are a lot ways to generate higher prices. You could look into Intermediate Microeconomics by Hal Varian (chef economist at Google). It is pretty easy to understand