Once a government has decided to award a concession by auction, it needs to decide what kind of auction to use. For concessions the standard is a first-price sealed bid auction in which bidders submit sealed envelopes containing their offer and the highest offer determines the price. The bidding may occur in one or two stages. In two-stage bidding the technical parameters of the bids are made comparable in the first stage, and only the main offer on the core bid parameter is submitted in the second. The main offer may relate to a price, a level of subsidy, a payment for net worth, or any other appropriate parameter
the discussion in this Note focuses on price.