An Experimental Study of Information Revelation Policies in Sequential Auctions

Theoretical models of information asymmetry have identied a tradeoff between the desire to learn and the desire to prevent an opponent from learning private information. This paper reports a laboratory experiment that investigates if actual bidders account for this tradeoff, using a sequential procurement auction with private cost information and varying information revelation policies. Specically, the Complete Information Policy, where all submitted bids are revealed between auctions, is compared against the Incomplete Information Policy, where only the winning bid is revealed. The experimental results are largely consistent with the theoretical predictions. For example, bidders pool with other types to prevent an opponent from learning signicantly more often under a Complete Information Policy. Also as predicted, the procurer pays less when employing an Incomplete Information Policy only when the market is highly competitive. Bids are usually more aggressive than the risk neutral quantitative prediction, which is usually consistent with risk aversion.Complete and Incomplete Information Revelation Policies, Laboratory Study, Procurement Auction, Multistage Game

Anglo-Dutch premium auctions in eighteenth-century Amsterdam

An Anglo-Dutch premium auction consists of an English auction followed by a Dutch auction, with a cash premium paid to the winner of the first round. We study such auctions used in the secondary debt market in eighteenth-century Amsterdam. This was among the first uses of auctions, or any structured market-clearing mechanism, in a financial market. We find that this market presented two distinct challenges - generating competition and aggregating information. We argue that the Anglo-Dutch premium auction is particularly well-suited to do both. Modeling equilibrium play theoretically, we predict a positive relationship between the uncertainty in a security's value and the likelihood of a second-round bid. Analyzing data on 16,854 securities sold in the late 1700s, we find empirical support for this prediction. This suggests that bidding behavior may have been consistent with (non-cooperative) equilibrium play, and therefore that these auctions were successful at generating competition. We also find evidence suggesting that these auctions succeeded at aggregating information. Thus, the Anglo-Dutch premium auction appears to have been an effective solution to a complex early market design problem

Conjugate information disclosure in an auction with learning

We consider a single-item, independent private value auction environment with two bidders: a leader, who knows his valuation, and a follower, who privately chooses how much to learn about his valuation. We show that, under some conditions, an ex-post efficient revenue-maximizing auction—which solicits bids sequentially—partially discloses the leader's bid to the follower, to influence his learning. The disclosure rule that emerges is novel; it may reveal to the follower only a pair of bids to which the leader's actual bid belongs. The identified disclosure rule, relative to the first-best, induces the follower to learn less when the leader's valuation is low and more when the leader's valuation is high

Security Design with Investor Private Information

I study the security design problem of a firm when investors rather than managers have private information about the firm. I find that it is often optimal to issue information-sensitive securities like equity. The "folklore proposition of debt" from traditional signalling models only goes through if the firm can vary the face value of debt with investor demand. When the firm has several assets, debt backed by a pool of assets is optimal when the degree of competition among investors is low, while equity backed by individual assets can be optimal when competition is high.Security design; Capital Structure; Auctions; Asset backed securities

Computing Bayes Nash Equilibrium Strategies in Auction Games via Simultaneous Online Dual Averaging

Auctions are modeled as Bayesian games with continuous type and action spaces. Computing equilibria in auction games is computationally hard in general and no exact solution theory is known. We introduce algorithms computing distributional strategies on a discretized version of the game via online convex optimization. One advantage of distributional strategies is that we do not have to make any assumptions on the shape of the bid function. Besides, the expected utility of agents is linear in the strategies. It follows that if our regularized optimization algorithms converge to a pure strategy, then they converge to an approximate equilibrium of the discretized game with high precision. Importantly, we show that the equilibrium of the discretized game approximates an equilibrium in the continuous game. In a wide variety of auction games, we provide empirical evidence that the method approximates the analytical (pure) Bayes Nash equilibrium closely. This speed and precision is remarkable, because in many finite games learning dynamics do not converge or are even chaotic. In standard models where agents are symmetric, we find equilibrium in seconds. The method allows for interdependent valuations and different types of utility functions and provides a foundation for broadly applicable equilibrium solvers that can push the boundaries of equilibrium analysis in auction markets and beyond

Market Design with Correlated Valuations

The effects of information on market design are explored in a simple setting where firms have private information about their correlated fixed costs and the government aims to maximize its expected revenue conditional on achieving efficient allocations. Government revenues are higher when the costs are less correlated (or are more of a private value). The reduced correlation increases the firms' information rents, but a change in the information structure also changes the expected market structures with positive effects on government revenues. If the government faces the no-deficit constraint, there are situations where efficient allocations are achieved under asymmetric information but not under symmetric information.market structure, correlated values, market design, government revenue

E-Fulfillment and Multi-Channel Distribution – A Review

This review addresses the specific supply chain management issues of Internet fulfillment in a multi-channel environment. It provides a systematic overview of managerial planning tasks and reviews corresponding quantitative models. In this way, we aim to enhance the understanding of multi-channel e-fulfillment and to identify gaps between relevant managerial issues and academic literature, thereby indicating directions for future research. One of the recurrent patterns in today’s e-commerce operations is the combination of ‘bricks-and-clicks’, the integration of e-fulfillment into a portfolio of multiple alternative distribution channels. From a supply chain management perspective, multi-channel distribution provides opportunities for serving different customer segments, creating synergies, and exploiting economies of scale. However, in order to successfully exploit these opportunities companies need to master novel challenges. In particular, the design of a multi-channel distribution system requires a constant trade-off between process integration and separation across multiple channels. In addition, sales and operations decisions are ever more tightly intertwined as delivery and after-sales services are becoming key components of the product offering.Distribution;E-fulfillment;Literature Review;Online Retailing

Searching the eBay Marketplace

This paper proposes a framework for demand estimation with data on bids, bidders' identities, and auction covariates from a sequence of eBay auctions. First the aspect of bidding in a marketplace environment is developed. Form the simple dynamic auction model with IPV and private bidding costs it follows that if participation is optimal the bidder searches with a "reservation bid" for low-price auctions. Extending results from the empirical auction literature and employing a similar two-stage procedure as has recently been used when estimating dynamic games it is shown that bidding costs are non-parametrically identified. The procedure is tried on a new data set. The median cost is estimated at less than 2% of transaction prices.

Online Auctions

The economic literature on online auctions is rapidly growing because of the enormous amount of freely available field data. Moreover, numerous innovations in auction-design features on platforms such as eBay have created excellent research opportunities. In this article, we survey the theoretical, empirical, and experimental research on bidder strategies (including the timing of bids and winner's-curse effects) and seller strategies (including reserve-price policies and the use of buy-now options) in online auctions, as well as some of the literature dealing with online-auction design (including stopping rules and multi-object pricing rules).