Socially Optimal Mechanisms

mechanism design;contests;advertising;lobbying;political campaigns;auctions

Optimal Auctions with Financial Externalities

We construct optimal auctions when bidders face financial externalities.In a Coasean World, in which the seller cannot prevent a perfect resale market, nor withhold the object, the lowest-price all-pay auction is optimal.In a Myersonean World, in which the seller can both prevent resale after the auction, and fully commit to not selling the object, an optimal two-stage mechanism is derived.In the first stage, bidders are asked to pay an entry fee.In the second stage, bidders play the lowest-price all-pay auction with a reserve price.In both worlds, the expected revenue is increasing in the financial externality, and each bidder's expected utility is independent of the financial externality.Optimal auctions;financial externalities;lowest-price allpay auction;Coasean World;Myersonean World

Auctions with Financial Externalities

We study sealed-bid auctions with financial externalities, i.e., auctions in which losers' utilities depend on how much the winner pays.In the unique symmetric equilibrium of the first-price sealed-bid auction (FPSB), larger financial externalities result in lower bids and in a lower expected revenue.The unique symmetric equilibrium of the second-price sealed-bid auction (SPSB) reveals ambiguous effects.We further show that a resale market does not have an e¤ect on the equilibrium bids and that FPSB yields a lower expected revenue than SPSB.With a reserve price, we find an equilibrium for FPSB that involves pooling at the reserve price.For SPSB we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a weakly separating equilibrium, and give an expression for the equilibrium.Auctions;financial externalities;reserve price;resale market

The Chopstick Auction

Onderstal, A.M.

The Chopstick Auction

chopstick auctions;exposure problem;loss aversion

The Effectiveness of Caps on Political Lobbying

In this paper, we analyze a lobby game, modelled as an all-pay auction in which interest groups submit bids in order to obtain a political prize.The bids are restricted to be below a cap imposed by the government.For both an incomplete and a complete information setting we show the following results. While ex post a lower cap may lead to higher lobbying expenditures, ex ante a lower cap always implies lower expected total lobbying expenditures.The incompletely informed government maximizes social welfare by implementing a cap equal to zero.lobbying;auctions;game theory

Optimal Auctions with Financial Externalities

We construct optimal auctions when bidders face financial externalities.In a Coasean World, in which the seller cannot prevent a perfect resale market, nor withhold the object, the lowest-price all-pay auction is optimal.In a Myersonean World, in which the seller can both prevent resale after the auction, and fully commit to not selling the object, an optimal two-stage mechanism is derived.In the first stage, bidders are asked to pay an entry fee.In the second stage, bidders play the lowest-price all-pay auction with a reserve price.In both worlds, the expected revenue is increasing in the financial externality, and each bidder's expected utility is independent of the financial externality

Auctions with Financial Externalities

We study sealed-bid auctions with financial externalities, i.e., auctions in which losers' utilities depend on how much the winner pays.In the unique symmetric equilibrium of the first-price sealed-bid auction (FPSB), larger financial externalities result in lower bids and in a lower expected revenue.The unique symmetric equilibrium of the second-price sealed-bid auction (SPSB) reveals ambiguous effects.We further show that a resale market does not have an e¤ect on the equilibrium bids and that FPSB yields a lower expected revenue than SPSB.With a reserve price, we find an equilibrium for FPSB that involves pooling at the reserve price.For SPSB we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a weakly separating equilibrium, and give an expression for the equilibrium.