Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
972278 Mathematical Social Sciences 2011 11 Pages PDF
Abstract

This paper considers second-price, sealed-bid auctions with a buy price where bidders’ types are discretely distributed. We characterize all equilibria in which bidders whose types are less than the buy price bid their own valuations. Budish and Takeyama (2001) analyze the two-bidder, two-type framework. They show that if bidders are risk-averse, then the seller can obtain a higher expected revenue from the auction with a certain buy price than from the auction without a buy price. We extend their revenue improvement result to the nn-bidder, two-type framework. In case of three or more types, however, bidders’ risk aversion is not a sufficient condition for a revenue improvement. We point out that even if bidders are risk-averse, the seller cannot always obtain a higher expected revenue from the auctions with a buy price.

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Physical Sciences and Engineering Mathematics Applied Mathematics
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