To me, the real guide to auctions for computer scientists is Vijay Krishna's Auction Theory (2009, Academic Press). At least that's what was recommended to me once.
Thanks! I was looking for a book like this and for some reason this one eluded my searches.
I was glad to help. At the time I didn't have a reason or time to go through it comprehensively but it seemed digestible and informative. Perhaps the only problem for me was that lots of these topics are completely new in my small post-Communist country so lots of exotic types of auctions are unrelatable for me but that's clearly not the book's problem but rather mine.
I think auctions would be really clever way of solving the issue of product launches with limited supply; right now we are living in a situation where goods sell out in seconds or minutes, possibly crashing the store system, leaving door open for scalpers (although I suspect the effect is exaggerated), and generally leaving everyone unhappy. Something like uniform price auction could work much better.
Well... The problem is that customers won't appreciate this that much. They're gonna interpret this as companies trying to extort them.
I really love the auction algorithm for maximum-weight matching, especially the variant where bidders bid the price that makes them indifferent with their second-best option.