On the volume of projections of the cross-polytope

We study properties of the volume of projections of the n-dimensional cross-polytope $\crosp^n = \{ x \in \R^n \mid |x_1| + \dots + |x_n| \leqslant 1\}.$ We prove that the projection of $\crosp^n$ onto a k-dimensional coordinate subspace has the maximum possible volume for k=2 and for k=3. We obtain the exact lower bound on the volume of such a projection onto a two-dimensional plane. Also, we show that there exist local maxima which are not global ones for the volume of a projection of $\crosp^n$ onto a k-dimensional subspace for any n>k⩾2.