ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the legal concept of auction. Unlike the economic theory of auction, the legal theory has not yet developed its own concept of auction. The first section outlines the economic concept of auction. The second section covers the English and Dutch auction from a legal point of view. It seeks to define similarities between them in order to establish the legal concept of auction. It argues that the legal concept of auction is narrower than its economic counterpart and covers only those buyer-made price-determination schemes that are based on a public, overt and successive bidding run by a neutral third person (auctioneer). The third section compares the established legal concept of auction to bidding methods which are sometimes confused with auctions: the games of chance, public procurement, stock exchange and public offers of a reward. It aims to find out how these bidding methods differ from auction. It argues that those methods should not be confused with auction since they lack the genuine competitive bidding essential for the legal concept of auction. The conclusion summarises the main findings of the chapter.
