IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-19-00083.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mission impossible: Buy price fails to signal information

Author

Listed:
  • Toshihiro Tsuchihashi

    (Daito Bunka University)

Abstract

According to the well-known linkage principle, a seller benefits from revealing information relevant to bidders' payoffs in auctions. For this purpose, the seller needs a signaling device to credibly transmit her private information to bidders. One natural candidate for such a device is a buy price. In this paper, I investigate the theoretical possibility that the buy price may credibly signal the seller's private information in second-price auctions. However, I find that the buy price cannot serve as a signaling device. There exists no separating equilibrium such that a buy price signals the seller's private information.

Suggested Citation

  • Toshihiro Tsuchihashi, 2019. "Mission impossible: Buy price fails to signal information," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(1), pages 431-434.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-19-00083
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2019/Volume39/EB-19-V39-I1-P43.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peyman Khezr & Flavio Menezes, 2018. "Auctions with an asking price," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 47(4), pages 1329-1350, November.
    2. Stanley Reynolds & John Wooders, 2009. "Auctions with a buy price," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 38(1), pages 9-39, January.
    3. Milgrom, Paul R & Weber, Robert J, 1982. "A Theory of Auctions and Competitive Bidding," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(5), pages 1089-1122, September.
    4. Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta & Kröger, Sabine, 2008. "Price formation in a sequential selling mechanism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(3-4), pages 832-843, September.
    5. Budish, Eric B. & Takeyama, Lisa N., 2001. "Buy prices in online auctions: irrationality on the internet?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 325-333, September.
    6. Cai, Hongbin & Riley, John & Ye, Lixin, 2007. "Reserve price signaling," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 253-268, July.
    7. repec:bla:jindec:v:48:y:2000:i:3:p:227-52 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Timothy Mathews, 2004. "The Impact of Discounting on an Auction with a Buyout Option: a Theoretical Analysis Motivated by eBay’s Buy-It-Now Feature," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 81(1), pages 25-52, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Toshihiro Tsuchihashi, 2020. "Reserve price signaling in first-price auctions with an uncertain number of bidders," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(4), pages 1081-1103, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shunda, Nicholas, 2009. "Auctions with a buy price: The case of reference-dependent preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 645-664, November.
    2. Axel Ockenfels & David Reiley & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2006. "Online Auctions," NBER Working Papers 12785, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Chen, Kong-Pin & Lai, Hung-pin & Yu, Ya-Ting, 2018. "The seller's listing strategy in online auctions: Evidence from eBay," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 107-144.
    4. Han, Jidong & Popkowski Leszczyc, Peter T.L. & Zhang, Zelin, 2021. "Empirical Analyses of Nonlinear Effects of Reserve Prices on Ending Prices in Online Auctions," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 86-102.
    5. Popkowski Leszczyc, Peter T.L. & Qiu, Chun & He, Yongfu, 2009. "Empirical Testing of the Reference-Price Effect of Buy-Now Prices in Internet Auctions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 211-221.
    6. Bauner, Christoph, 2015. "Mechanism choice and the buy-it-now auction: A structural model of competing buyers and sellers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 19-31.
    7. Kong‐Pin Chen & Szu‐Hsien Ho & Chi‐Hsiang Liu & Chien‐Ming Wang, 2017. "The Optimal Listing Strategies In Online Auctions," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(2), pages 421-437, May.
    8. Kirkegaard, René & Overgaard, Per Baltzer, 2008. "Pre-auction offers in asymmetric first-price and second-price auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 145-165, May.
    9. Zhang, Hanzhe, 2021. "The optimal sequence of prices and auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    10. Shunda, Nicholas, 2009. "Auctioning with Aspirations: Keep Them Low (Enough)," MPRA Paper 16242, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Lester, Benjamin & Visschers, Ludo & Wolthoff, Ronald, 2017. "Competing with asking prices," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(2), May.
    12. Grebe, Tim & Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta & Kröger, Sabine, 2021. "How do sellers benefit from Buy-It-Now prices in eBay auctions?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 189-205.
    13. Jong-Rong Chen & Kong-Pin Chen & Chien-Fu Chou & Ching-I Huang, 2013. "A Dynamic Model of Auctions with Buy-It-Now: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 393-429, June.
    14. Lester, Benjamin & Visschers, Ludo & Wolthoff, Ronald, 2014. "Competing with Asking Prices," 2007 Annual Meeting, July 29-August 1, 2007, Portland, Oregon TN 2015-37, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    15. Shahriar, Quazi & Wooders, John, 2011. "An experimental study of auctions with a buy price under private and common values," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 558-573, June.
    16. Vasserman, Shoshana & Watt, Mitchell, 2021. "Risk aversion and auction design: Theoretical and empirical evidence," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    17. Nozomu Muto & Yasuhiro Shirata & Takuro Yamashita, 2020. "Revenue-Capped Efficient Auctions," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(3), pages 1284-1320.
    18. L. Elisa Celis & Gregory Lewis & Markus Mobius & Hamid Nazerzadeh, 2014. "Buy-It-Now or Take-a-Chance: Price Discrimination Through Randomized Auctions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(12), pages 2927-2948, December.
    19. Peyman Khezr & Flavio Menezes, 2018. "Auctions with an asking price," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 47(4), pages 1329-1350, November.
    20. Wang, Hong, 2017. "Analysis and design for multi-unit online auctions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(3), pages 1191-1203.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    buy price; signaling; second price auction;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-19-00083. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.