IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jogath/v43y2014i3p487-514.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Comparing first and second price auctions with asymmetric bidders

Author

Listed:
  • Vlad Mares
  • Jeroen Swinkels

Abstract

We study procurement auctions in which, as is common in practice, a group of sellers (incumbents, qualified bidders) is given an advantage, based, for example, on better reliability, quality, or incumbency status. We show conditions under which for any given first price handicap auction, there is a simple second-price design which dominates it. This generalizes a previous result for the case of an auction with one insider and one outsider (Mares and Swinkels in J Econ Theory, 2013 ) and sharpens our understanding of the classical result by Maskin and Riley (Rev Econ Stud 67:413–438, 2000 ). Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Vlad Mares & Jeroen Swinkels, 2014. "Comparing first and second price auctions with asymmetric bidders," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(3), pages 487-514, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jogath:v:43:y:2014:i:3:p:487-514
    DOI: 10.1007/s00182-013-0392-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00182-013-0392-8
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00182-013-0392-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yeon-Koo Che, 1993. "Design Competition through Multidimensional Auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(4), pages 668-680, Winter.
    2. Eric Maskin & John Riley, 2000. "Asymmetric Auctions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(3), pages 413-438.
    3. Leonardo Rezende, 2009. "Biased procurement auctions," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 38(1), pages 169-185, January.
    4. John Asker & Estelle Cantillon, 2010. "Procurement when price and quality matter," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(1), pages 1-34, March.
    5. Jason Shachat & J. Todd Swarthout, 2010. "Procurement Auctions for Differentiated Goods," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 7(1), pages 6-22, March.
    6. Riley, John G & Samuelson, William F, 1981. "Optimal Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 381-392, June.
    7. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    8. Cabral, Luis M B & Greenstein, Shane, 1990. "Switching Costs and Bidding Parity in Government Procurement of Computer Systems," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 453-469, Fall.
    9. Lengwiler, Yvan & Wolfstetter, Elmar G., 2006. "Corruption in Procurement Auctions," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 90, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    10. E. Glen Weyl & Michal Fabinger, 2013. "Pass-Through as an Economic Tool: Principles of Incidence under Imperfect Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(3), pages 528-583.
    11. Kirkegaard, René, 2012. "Favoritism in asymmetric contests: Head starts and handicaps," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 226-248.
    12. Justin Marion, 2009. "How Costly Is Affirmative Action? Government Contracting and California's Proposition 209," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(3), pages 503-522, August.
    13. Philip J. Reny & Shmuel Zamir, 2004. "On the Existence of Pure Strategy Monotone Equilibria in Asymmetric First-Price Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(4), pages 1105-1125, July.
    14. Maskin, Eric S & Riley, John G, 1984. "Optimal Auctions with Risk Averse Buyers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1473-1518, November.
    15. Marion, Justin, 2007. "Are bid preferences benign? The effect of small business subsidies in highway procurement auctions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1591-1624, August.
    16. Mares, Vlad & Swinkels, Jeroen M., 2011. "Near-optimality of second price mechanisms in a class of asymmetric auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 218-241, May.
    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. Patrick Hummel & R. Preston McAfee & Sergei Vassilvitskii, 2016. "Incentivizing advertiser networks to submit multiple bids," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 45(4), pages 1031-1052, November.
    2. Javier Castro & Rosa Espínola & Inmaculada Gutiérrez & Daniel Gómez, 2023. "Auctions: A New Method for Selling Objects with Bimodal Density Functions," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 61(4), pages 1707-1743, April.

    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. Mares, Vlad & Swinkels, Jeroen M., 2014. "On the analysis of asymmetric first price auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 1-40.
    2. Mares, Vlad & Swinkels, Jeroen M., 2011. "Near-optimality of second price mechanisms in a class of asymmetric auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 218-241, May.
    3. Kaplan, Todd R. & Zamir, Shmuel, 2015. "Advances in Auctions," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    4. Ari Hyytinen & Sofia Lundberg & Otto Toivanen, 2018. "Design of public procurement auctions: evidence from cleaning contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 49(2), pages 398-426, June.
    5. Hubbard, Timothy P. & Paarsch, Harry J., 2009. "Investigating bid preferences at low-price, sealed-bid auctions with endogenous participation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 1-14, January.
    6. John Asker & Estelle Cantillon, 2008. "Properties of scoring auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(1), pages 69-85, March.
    7. Hanming Fang & Stephen Morris, 2012. "Multidimensional Private Value Auctions," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 9, pages 319-356, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Barbosa, Klenio & Boyer, Pierre C., 2021. "Discrimination in Dynamic Procurement Design with Learning-by-doing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    9. Moreira, Humberto Ataíde & Araújo, Aloísio Pessoa de & Castro Filho, Luciano I. de, 2004. "Pure strategy equilibria of multidimensional and non-monotonic auctions," FGV EPGE Economics Working Papers (Ensaios Economicos da EPGE) 571, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil).
    10. Timothy P. Hubbard & Harry J. Paarsch, 2012. "On the Numerical Solution of Equilibria in Auction Models with Asymmetries within the Private-Values Paradigm," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 291, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    11. Marion, Justin, 2007. "Are bid preferences benign? The effect of small business subsidies in highway procurement auctions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1591-1624, August.
    12. Cantillon, Estelle, 2008. "The effect of bidders' asymmetries on expected revenue in auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-25, January.
    13. Roberto Burguet, 2000. "Auction theory: a guided tour," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 24(1), pages 3-50, January.
    14. Huang, He & Li, Zhipeng, 2015. "Procurement auctions with ex-ante endogenous bribery," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 111-117.
    15. Matthew J. Clayton & S. Abraham Ravid, 1999. "The Effect of Leverage on Bidding Behavior: Theory and Evidence from the FCC Auctions," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 99-055, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    16. Anne Épaulard & Jean-Pierre Laffargue & Pierre Malgrange, 2008. "Présentation générale," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(2), pages 1-13.
    17. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2017. "First‐Price Auctions With General Information Structures: Implications for Bidding and Revenue," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 107-143, January.
    18. Onderstal, Sander, 2009. "Bidding for the unemployed: An application of mechanism design to welfare-to-work programs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 715-722, August.
    19. Jofre-Bonet, Mireia & Pesendorfer, Martin, 2014. "Optimal sequential auctions," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 61-71.
    20. Hongjun Zhong, 2002. "postbid market interaction and auction choice," Microeconomics 0210002, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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:spr:jogath:v:43:y:2014:i:3:p:487-514. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.