The Impact of Resale on 2-Bidder First-Price Auctions where One Bidder's Value is Commonly Known

We consider 2-bidder first-price auctions where one bidder's value is commonly known. Such auctions induce an ineffcient allocation. We show that a resale opportunity, where the auction winner can make a take-it-or-leave-it offer to the loser, increases (reduces) the ineffciency of the market when the buyer with the commonly known value is weak (strong). Resale always reduces all bidders' payoffs and increases the initial seller's revenue.asymmetric first-price auctions, resale, effciency

Speculation in Standard Auctions with Resale

In standard auctions with symmetric, independent private value bidders resale creates a role for a speculator—a bidder who is commonly known to have no use value for the good on sale. For second-price and English auctions the efficient value-bidding equilibrium coexists with a continuum of inefficient equilibria in which the speculator wins the auction and makes positive profits. First-price and Dutch auctions have an essentially unique equilibrium, and whether or not the speculator wins the auction and distorts the final allocation depends on the number of bidders, the value distribution, and the discount factor. Speculators do not make profits in first-price or Dutch auctions

A Characterization of the Conditions for Optimal Auction with Resale

Zheng has proposed a seller-optimal auction for (asymmetric) independent-privatevalue environments where inter-bidder resale is possible. Zheng’s construction requires novel conditions — Resale Monotonicity, Transitivity, and Invariance — on the bidders’ value distribution profile. The only known examples of distribution profiles satisfying these conditions in environments with three or more bidders are uniform distributions. Our characterization result shows that Zheng’s conditions, while being strong, are satisfied by many non-uniform distribution profiles. A crucial step in our analysis is to show that Invariance implies Resale Monotonicity and Transitivity

A Characterization of the Distributions That Imply Existence of Linear Equilibria in the Kyle-Model

The existence of a linear equilibrium in Kyle's model of market making with multiple, symmetrically informed strategic traders is implied for any number of strategic traders if the joint distribution of the underlying exogenous random variables is elliptical. The reverse implication has been shown for the case in which the random variables are independent and have finite second moments. Here we extend this result to the case in which the underlying random variables are not necessarily independent and their joint distribution is determined by its moments

Speculation in Standard Auctions with Resale

In standard auctions with symmetric, independent private value bidders resale creates a role for a speculator - a bidder who is commonly known to have no use value for the good on sale. For second-price and English auctions the efficient value-bidding equilibrium coexists with a continuum of inefficient equilibria in which the speculator wins the auction and makes positive profits. First-price and Dutch auctions have an essentially unique equilibrium, and whether or not the speculator wins the auction and distorts the final allocation depends on the number of bidders, the value distribution, and the discount factor. Speculators do not make profits in first-price or Dutch auctions.standard auctions, speculation, resale, efficiency

On the Existence of Linear Equilibria in the Rochet-Vila Model of Market Making

This paper derives necessary and sucient conditions for the existence of linear equilibria in the Rochet-Vila model of market making. In contrast to most previous work on the existence of linear equilibria in models of market making, we do not impose independence of the underlying random variables. For distributions that are determined by their moments we show that a linear equilibrium exists if and only if the joint distribution of noise trade and asset payoff is elliptical.Market Microstructure, Market Making, Linear Equilibria

A Characterization of the Distributions That Imply Existence of Linear Equilibria in the Kyle-Model

The existence of a linear equilibrium in Kyle's model of market making with multiple, symmetrically informed strategic traders is implied for any number of strategic traders if the joint distribution of the underlying exogenous random variables is elliptical. The reverse implication has been shown for the case in which the random variables are independent and have finite second moments. Here we extend this result to the case in which the underlying random variables are not necessarily independent and their joint distribution is determined by its moments.Market Microstructure; Kyle Model; Linear

Garbled Elections

Majority rules are frequently used to decide whether or not a public good should be provided, but will typically fail to achieve an efficient provision. We provide a worst-case analysis of the majority rule with an optimally chosen majority threshold, assuming that voters have independent private valuations and are exante symmetric (provision cost shares are included in the valuations). We show that if the population is large it can happen that the optimal majority rule is essentially no better than a random provision of the public good. But the optimal majority rule is worst-case asymptotically efficient in the large-population limit if (i) the voters’ expected valuation is bounded away from 0, and (ii) an absolute bound for valuations is known

Matching Heterogeneous Agents with a Linear Search Technology

Steady state equilibria in heterogeneous agent matching models with search frictions have been shown to exist in Shimer and Smith (2000) under the assumption of a quadratic search technology. We extend their analysis to the commonly investigated linear search technology.Search, Matching, Steady State Equilibrium

Optimal Auction Design and Irrelevance of Private Information

We consider the problem of mechanism design by a principal who has private information. We point out a simple condition under which the privacy of the principal's information is irrelevant in the sense that the mechanism implemented by the principal coincides with the mechanism that would be optimal if the principal's information were publicly known. This condition is then used to show that the privacy of the principal's information is irrelevant in many environments with private values and quasi-linear preferences, including the Myerson's classical auction environments in which the seller is privately informed about her cost of selling. Our approach unifies results by Maskin and Tirole, Tan, Yilankaya, Skreta, and Balestrieri. We also provide an example of a classical principal-agent environment with private values and quasi-linear preferences where a privately informed principal can do better than when her information is public.independent private values, optimal auction, resale, inverse virtual valuation function