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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Optimal Auction Design In A Common Value Model, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris
Optimal Auction Design In A Common Value Model, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We study auction design when bidders have a pure common value equal to the maximum of their independent signals. In the revenue maximizing mechanism, each bidder makes a payment that is independent of his signal and the allocation discriminates in favor of bidders with lower signals. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition under which the optimal mechanism reduces to a posted price under which all bidders are equally likely to get the good. This model of pure common values can equivalently be interpreted as model of resale: the bidders have independent private values at the auction stage, and the …
Selling To Intermediaries: Optimal Auction Design In A Common Value Model, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris
Selling To Intermediaries: Optimal Auction Design In A Common Value Model, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We characterize revenue maximizing auctions when the bidders are intermediaries who wish to resell the good. The bidders have differential information about their common resale opportunities: each bidder privately observes an independent draw of a resale opportunity, and the highest signal is a sufficient statistic for the value of winning the good. If the good must be sold, then the optimal mechanism is simply a posted price at which all bidders are willing to purchase the good, and all bidders are equally likely to be allocated the good, irrespective of their signals. If the seller can keep the good, then …
Informationally Robust Optimal Auction Design, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris
Informationally Robust Optimal Auction Design, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A single unit of a good is to be sold by auction to one of two buyers. The good has either a high value or a low value, with known prior probabilities. The designer of the auction knows the prior over values but is uncertain about the correct model of the buyers’ beliefs. The designer evaluates a given auction design by the lowest expected revenue that would be generated across all models of buyers’ information that are consistent with the common prior and across all Bayesian equilibria. An optimal auction for such a seller is constructed, as is a worst-case …