I'm extremely interested in this stuff.
Auction is deserving more and more attention in economics recently. Some good nominated econmists in this fields are:
Susan Athey
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/athey
Her research concerns a variety of topics in microeconomic theory and industrial organization. Although most of my work is theoretical, a substantial portion focuses on empirical applications and econometric methods. I am currently working in five main areas, with many papers spanning several of these topics: (1) Dynamic Games and Contracts, (2) Auctions, (3) Nonparametric Identification of Structural Econometric Models, (4) Economics of Organizations, and (5) Comparative Statics. Most of my research is jointly authored with a variety of coauthors.
Also I would list some econoists I would like to recommend:
David Card
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/econ/faculty/card_d.shtml
Elhanan Helpman
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/helpman