Essays on Auctions with Inter-dependent Valuations

Essays on Auctions with Inter-dependent Valuations PDF Author: Sérgio Orioli Parreiras
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Essays on Auctions with Inter-dependent Valuations

Essays on Auctions with Inter-dependent Valuations PDF Author: Sérgio Orioli Parreiras
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Empirical Essays on the Efficiency of Heterogeneous Good Auction

Empirical Essays on the Efficiency of Heterogeneous Good Auction PDF Author: Thomas A. Martin (IV.)
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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A recent pursuit of the auction design literature has been the development of an auction mechanism which performs well in a multi-good setting, when the goods are not substitutes. This work began in earnest with the Federal Communications Commission spectrum license auctions in the early nineties and continues to this day. In a setting in which goods are not substitutes, the value of one good depends non-negatively on the quantities of other goods that are won. This type of interdependent value structure has proven difficult to account for in auction design. However, the need for mechanisms that account for such a value structure hinges on the magnitude of the interdependence, whose computation is an empirical exercise. I identify a setting in which to perform this computation. I develop an empirical methodology that allows me to recover bidders' value functions in a multi-good auction setting. This methodology allows me to assess the magnitude of any interdependence in the goods? value structure. Since the auction setting that I analyze is a variation of the standard uniform price auction, which has been adapted for a multi-good setting, I am able to measure the benefit of having a direct revelation mechanism. This counterfactual study is performed by maximizing the value of the auction using the recovered bidder value functions. I find evidence that there is an interdependent value structure in the setting. The counterfactual auction finds that the standard uniform price auction, adapted to a multi-good setting, performs poorly in the presence of such a value structure. The setting for this analysis is an auction for financial transmission rights held in Texas in 2002. The auction involved twenty two firms and collected almost $70 million in revenue. This research is the first to empirically assess efficiency in this type of auction setting.

Three Essays in Empirical Auctions

Three Essays in Empirical Auctions PDF Author: Sudip Gupta
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Efficient and dominance solvable auctions with interdependent valuations

Efficient and dominance solvable auctions with interdependent valuations PDF Author: Kim-Sau Chung
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Auctions
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Essays on Almost Common Value Auctions

Essays on Almost Common Value Auctions PDF Author: Susan L. Rose
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Auctions
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Abstract: In a common value auction, the value of the object for sale is the same to all bidders. In an almost common value auction, one bidder, the advantaged bidder, values the object slightly more than the other, regular bidders. With only two bidders, a slight advantage is predicted to have an explosive effect on the outcome and revenue of an auction. The advantaged bidder always wins and revenue decreases dramatically relative to the pure common value auction. Ascending auctions, which reduce to two bidders, are thought to be particularly vulnerable to the explosive effect, which may discourage entry. My dissertation investigates the explosive effect in experimental English clock auctions. The first essay, "An Experimental Investigation of the Explosive Effect in Almost Common Value Auctions," uses a two-bidder wallet game to test these predictions. I find the effect of an advantage to be proportional, not explosive, confirming past studies. I develop a behavioral model that predicts the proportional effect and test it against the data. The model has two types of bidders: naïve and sophisticated. Naïve bidders use a rule of thumb bidding function while sophisticated bidders are fully rational and account for the probability that a rival is naïve or sophisticated when best responding. I was able to classify subjects as naïve or sophisticated, and those classified as sophisticated do have a better understanding of the game. However, all subjects suffered from the winner's curse, which may have masked the explosive effect and been exacerbated by the structure of the wallet game. The second essay, "Bidding in Almost Common Value Auctions: An Experiment," moves the analysis to a four bidder auction to directly test the entry predictions. I used a more intuitive common value structure and controlled for the winner's curse by using subjects with prior experience in common value auctions. I found that although subjects did not suffer from the winner's curse, there is no evidence of an explosive effect. Advantaged bidders won no more auctions than predicted by chance. Entry and auction revenue were unaffected by the presence of advantaged bidders.

Three Essays on Auction Theory

Three Essays on Auction Theory PDF Author: Xiaoshu Xu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 63

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Abstract: My dissertation consists of three chapters in theoretical auction analysis. The first chapter considers optimal sequential auctions with new bidders arriving in each period. The second chapter examines how resale affects bidding strategies and auction outcomes in an auction environment with costly entry. The third chapter investigates how resale affects bidding strategies and auction outcomes in a sequential auction setting where the values of items auctioned in different periods exhibit synergies. The first chapter gives a full characterization of the optimal sequential second-price (or ascending English) auctions with sequentially arriving bidders. There are n bidders in the first period and m new bidders arrive in the second period. Based on the auctioneer's commitment power, we study two cases: full commitment and noncommitment. In both cases, we establish the existence of a symmetric equilibrium characterized by a threshold strategy - -a bidder does not bid in the first auction when her valuation is below this threshold and bids according to an increasing function otherwise. In the noncommitment case, the auctioneer chooses an optimal reserve price to maximize the expected revenue from the second period; thus her decision of whether to include previous bidders as potential buyers is endogenously determined by the reserve price in the first auction. This might create multiple equilibria depending on the beliefs of the auctioneer and the bidders. We apply a fairly intuitive rule to establish the uniqueness. We also extend our analysis to allow for opportunities for resale, where the winner in the first auction can opt to resell the item to new bidders. The second chapter, joint with Dan Levin and Lixin Ye, studies how resale affects auctions with costly entry in a model where an arbitrary number of bidders possess two-dimensional private information signals: entry costs and valuations. We establish the existence of symmetric entry equilibrium and identify sufficient conditions under which the equilibrium is unique. Our analysis suggests that the opportunity of resale induces motivation for both speculative entry and bargain hunting abstentions. By following the uniform distribution for numerical analysis, our results suggest that while the entry probability and efficiency are always higher when resale is allowed, the auctioneer's expected revenue is lower when resale is allowed for almost all parameter values. We also compare this model to one where bidders may follow "strong" or "weak" distributions in terms of valuations. The third chapter, joint with Dan Levin and Lixin Ye, studies a sequential second-price auction of two objects with two bidders, where the winner of the package obtains a synergy from the second object. If reselling after the two auctions occurs, it proceeds as either monopoly or monopsony take-it-or-leave-it offer. I find that a post-auction resale has a significant impact on bidding strategies in the auctions. When seller makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer in resale, there is no equilibrium where at least one bidder reveals her type with positive probability. When buyer makes the offer instead, there exist symmetric increasing equilibrium strategies for both items. While allowing resale always improves efficiency, I demonstrate that the effect of resale is ambiguous on expected revenue as Ill as the probability of exposure. I also extend this model to allow for three bidders and provide the equilibrium analysis.

Two Essays on Bidding in Multi-unit Common Value Auctions

Two Essays on Bidding in Multi-unit Common Value Auctions PDF Author: Minjie Shao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Auctions
Languages : en
Pages : 91

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This dissertation consists of two essays on the topic of bidding in multi-unit common value auction. Essay one examines the role of capacity constraint on the auction results and bidding behavior. We consider a general case where bidders are unconstrained, and a second setting where bidders are capacity constrained. We document downward sloping demand curves for individual bidders. Bidders shade their bids by submitting quantity-price pairs and spreading their bids. The winner's curse is strong in the unconstrained treatment, but we find no evidence of the winner's curse when bidding constraints are imposed. Unconstrained bidders shade bids significantly more and their quantity-weighted prices are much lower than those in the constrained treatment. Interacting with the information structure, the capacity constraint has a significant impact on the auction results including the market clearing price, market efficiency, and the degree of market concentration. We provide evidence that efficient price discovery in multi-unit auctions with diverse information is possible, but careful attention to auction design will make this outcome more likely. Essay two examines how the introduction of a noncompetitive bidding option affects outcomes in a multi-unit uniform-price auction. The experimental design incorporates many of the characteristics of the markets that pertain to the issuance of new equity securities. Important features of the bidding environment include endogenous bidder entry, costly information acquisition, bidders that differ by capacity constraint, and substantial uncertainty with respect to the intrinsic value. We use a standard uniform-price auction as our baseline setting where only competitive bids are accepted. Our results show that introducing the noncompetitive bidding option improves auction performance by increasing revenue and reducing price error. Underpricing is found in both treatments, but is less severe in the presence of the noncompetitive bidding option. The incorporation of this option significantly increases both the small bidder participation rate and allocation, and reduces the incentive for small bidders to free ride by submitting extremely high bids. Under both treatments, information acquisition increases large bidders' profits but proves unprofitable for small bidders, and pricing accuracy is increasing in the rate of information acquisition.

Auction Theory

Auction Theory PDF Author: Vijay Krishna
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0080922937
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Auction Theory, Second Edition improves upon his 2002 bestseller with a new chapter on package and position auctions as well as end-of-chapter questions and chapter notes. Complete proofs and new material about collusion complement Krishna’s ability to reveal the basic facts of each theory in a style that is clear, concise, and easy to follow. With the addition of a solutions manual and other teaching aids, the 2e continues to serve as the doorway to relevant theory for most students doing empirical work on auctions. Focuses on key auction types and serves as the doorway to relevant theory for those doing empirical work on auctions New chapter on combinatorial auctions and new analyses of theory-informed applications New chapter-ending exercises and problems of varying difficulties support and reinforce key points

Auctions with Interdependent Valuations

Auctions with Interdependent Valuations PDF Author: Peter Funk
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : de
Pages : 11

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Essays on Value Distributions in All-pay Auctions

Essays on Value Distributions in All-pay Auctions PDF Author: Suat Akbulut
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter studies the value distribution adoption choice of a player when she competes against an incumbent in an all-pay auction setting. The second chapter analyzes how much would a player like to learn about her own valuation in a similar setting. Lastly, the third chapter analyzes the best information disclosure policy that an auctioneer can adopt according to different performance measures in a two-player two-stage all-pay auction setting, where the players choose their value distributions in the first stage. The first chapter considers a two-player all-pay auction setting and modifies it by adding a technology-adoption stage at the beginning of the game. In a discrete valuations environment, assuming one player's valuation is common knowledge, we allow the other player (informed) to pick a distribution over the valuation space. Her opponent (uninformed) observes her choice of distribution. However, her valuation is privately drawn according to this distribution. The two players then play an asymmetric all-pay auction. We show that in such a setting, the informed player adopts a distribution that assigns positive probabilities to at most two elements; that will always contain the supremum, and sometimes, the infimum of the set of available values. She pools the extreme values in order to create an information asymmetry, which then would make the uninformed player bid less aggressively. We later impose a mean condition on the distribution that the informed player could pick and observe that she still prefers to split the probability mass on in-between values to the extreme ones. As a result, she picks the same support but arranges the probability mass on these values to meet the mean condition. In other words, the informed player is first interested in including only the extreme values in the support of her value distribution, and then the probabilities assigned to those values. The second chapter assumes that the informed player's value distribution is common knowledge and that she cannot observe her realized value. However, she can acquire additional information about her realized value by adopting a learning experiment. She picks such an experiment in the first stage. Even though her choice of experiment is observed by the uninformed player, she privately learns the realization of the experiment. Then, they play an all-pay auction in the second stage of the game. Every learning experiment induces a posterior probability distribution over the convex hull of the set of available values. The informed player bids as if her value is drawn from this posterior distribution, where she privately observes her value. Therefore, her problem boils down to choosing a posterior distribution that stochastically dominates the prior in the second-order sense. We show that the informed player's motivation to split the probability mass on in-between types to the extreme types is still present. However, due to the distributional constraints, she will pick a fully informative experiment to learn her value as long as it does not result in her two lowest values bidding zero with a positive probability in the equilibrium of the all-pay auction stage. If that is the case, she would try to mimic the prior distribution for the high types, who will never bid zero, and allocate the remaining probability to only one type to meet the constraint. One natural extension of our analysis is studying the equilibrium value distribution profiles when both players are choosing their own value distribution. When the possible values are only high and low, we show that the profile in which one player picks the high value with probability one while the other player assigns probability half to each values is the unique (up to symmetry) value distribution profile. Moreover, when we consider any set of values, we show that the profile in which one player picks the highest value with probability one, while the other player assigns probability half to the highest and the lowest values each is an equilibrium value distribution profile. Due to the lack of an analytical approach to the equilibrium bidding distributions of the all-pay auctions in an asymmetric information environment, checking whether this equilibrium is unique is left as future work. The last chapter analyzes the best information disclosure policy that an auctioneer can adopt according to different performance measures, namely players' payoff, prize allocation efficiency, and aggregate effort. The significant contribution of the analysis is that players have the ability to choose the distribution from which their own types are drawn. Using a two-player all-pay auction with the two-type setting, we show that the optimal disclosure policy depends on the ratio of the value of winning for a low type to the value of winning for a high type.