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Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

2018

First-price auction

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First-Price Auctions With General Information Structures: A Short Introduction, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris May 2018

First-Price Auctions With General Information Structures: A Short Introduction, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

In a recent paper, [Bergemann et al. 2017a], we derive results about equilibrium behavior in the first-price auction that hold across all common-prior information structures. The purpose of this letter is to give an informal introduction into the results. At the end we offer a brief discussion of related work.


Revenue Guarantee Equivalence, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris May 2018

Revenue Guarantee Equivalence, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We revisit the revenue comparison of standard auction formats, including first-price, second-price, and English auctions. We rank auctions according to their revenue guarantees, i.e., the greatest lower bound of revenue across all informational environments, where we hold fixed the distribution of bidders' values. We conclude that if we restrict attention to the symmetric affiliated models of Milgrom and Weber (1982) and monotonic pure-strategy equilibria, first-price, second-price, and English auctions all have the same revenue guarantee, which is equal to that of the first-price auction as characterized by Bergemann, Brooks, and Morris (2017a). If we consider all equilibria or if we …