the auction where lying about what you want costs you money, so nobody bothers.
means a sealed-bid auction format where the highest bidder wins but pays only the second-highest bid, making honest bidding the smartest strategy.
from named for william vickrey, the columbia economist who formalized it in 1961; he won the nobel prize in economics in 1996 for this and related work on incentives, then died three days after the announcement.
google ads — early adwords auctions charged winners the second-highest bid, 2002
ebay proxy bidding — auto-bids up to your max, you often pay just above rival's bid
spectrum auctions — fcc explored vickrey-clarke-groves designs for airwave licenses
stamp collector sales — philatelic sealed-bid sales used second-price rules for decades