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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Correlation-Robust Auction Design, Wei He, Jiangtao Li
Correlation-Robust Auction Design, Wei He, Jiangtao Li
Research Collection School Of Economics
We study the design of auctions when the auctioneer has limited statistical information about the joint distribution of the bidders' valuations. More specifically, we consider an auctioneer who has an estimate of the marginal distribution of a generic bidder's valuation but does not have reliable information about the correlation structure. We analyze the performance of mechanisms in terms of the revenue guarantee, that is, the greatest lower bound of revenue across all joint distributions that are consistent with the marginals. A simple auction format, the second-price auction with no reserve price, is shown to be asymptotically optimal, as the number …
Are Simple Mechanisms Optimal When Agents Are Unsophisticated?, Jiangtao Li, Piotr Dworczak
Are Simple Mechanisms Optimal When Agents Are Unsophisticated?, Jiangtao Li, Piotr Dworczak
Research Collection School Of Economics
We study the design of mechanisms involving agents that have limited strategic sophistication. We define a mechanism to be simple if—given the assumed level of strategic sophistication—agents can determine their optimal strategy. We examine whether it is optimal for the mechanism designer who faces strategically unsophisticated agents to offer a simple mechanism. We show that when the designer uses a mechanism that is not simple, while she loses the ability to predict play, she may nevertheless be better off no matter how agents resolve their strategic confusion