IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/reecde/v18y2014i1p11-35.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ordering sellers in sequential auctions

Author

Listed:
  • Qiang Gong
  • Xu Tan
  • Yiqing Xing

Abstract

We examine how buyers’ behaviors, sellers’ profits and the social welfare (the total surplus of all sellers and buyers) vary with the order of sellers in sequential auctions where sellers have different reservation values. First, when reserve prices are exogenously set to be sellers’ reservation values, a social planner would order sellers from low to high based on their reservation values, which yields a uniquely efficient order that maximizes the social welfare. However, an auctioneer charged with maximizing the total profit of all sellers would want to reverse the increasing order in certain situations. Second, when reserve prices can be endogenously selected in addition to the order of sellers, the auctioneer would always want to adopt the increasing order for the optimally chosen reserve prices. Sequential auctions with optimally chosen reserve prices and an increasing order are shown optimal among the class of voluntary and incentive-compatible mechanisms. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Qiang Gong & Xu Tan & Yiqing Xing, 2014. "Ordering sellers in sequential auctions," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 18(1), pages 11-35, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:reecde:v:18:y:2014:i:1:p:11-35
    DOI: 10.1007/s10058-013-0152-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10058-013-0152-z
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10058-013-0152-z?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. Gerard J. van den Berg & Jan C. van Ours & Menno P. Pradhan, 2001. "The Declining Price Anomaly in Dutch Dutch Rose Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1055-1062, September.
    2. Alan Beggs & Kathryn Graddy, 1997. "Declining Values and the Afternoon Effect: Evidence from Art Auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(3), pages 544-565, Autumn.
    3. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1981. "Allocation Mechanisms and the Design of Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1477-1499, November.
    4. Caillaud, Bernard & Mezzetti, Claudio, 2004. "Equilibrium reserve prices in sequential ascending auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 78-95, July.
    5. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    6. Ashenfelter, Orley, 1989. "How Auctions Work for Wine and Art," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 23-36, Summer.
    7. Mas-Colell, Andreu & Whinston, Michael D. & Green, Jerry R., 1995. "Microeconomic Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195102680.
    8. McAfee, R. Preston & Vincent, Daniel, 1997. "Sequentially Optimal Auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 246-276, February.
    9. Milgrom,Paul, 2004. "Putting Auction Theory to Work," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521551847.
    10. Milgrom, Paul R & Weber, Robert J, 1982. "A Theory of Auctions and Competitive Bidding," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(5), pages 1089-1122, September.
    11. Milgrom,Paul, 2004. "Putting Auction Theory to Work," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521536721.
    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. Ingebretsen Carlson, Jim & Wu, Tingting, 2022. "Shill bidding and information in eBay auctions: A Laboratory study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 341-360.
    2. Fanqi Shi & Yiqing Xing, 2022. "Implementing optimal outcomes through sequential auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 53(4), pages 703-732, 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. Emiel Maasland & Sander Onderstal, 2006. "Going, Going, Gone! A Swift Tour of Auction Theory and its Applications," De Economist, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 197-249, June.
    2. Mezzetti, Claudio, 2008. "Aversion to Price Risk and the Afternoon Effect," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 857, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    3. Lamy, Laurent, 2009. "The Shill Bidding Effect versus the Linkage Principle," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 390-413, January.
    4. Lorentziadis, Panos L., 2016. "Optimal bidding in auctions from a game theory perspective," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 248(2), pages 347-371.
    5. Gerard Marty & Raphaele Preget, 2007. "A Socio-economic Analysis of French Public Timber Sales," Working Papers - Cahiers du LEF 2007-03, Laboratoire d'Economie Forestiere, AgroParisTech-INRA.
    6. Walter Beckert, 2004. "Dynamic Monopolies with Stochastic Demand," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 0404, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.
    7. Hu, Audrey & Offerman, Theo & Zou, Liang, 2011. "Premium auctions and risk preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2420-2439.
    8. Ernan Haruvy & Peter Popkowski Leszczyc & Octavian Carare & James Cox & Eric Greenleaf & Wolfgang Jank & Sandy Jap & Young-Hoon Park & Michael Rothkopf, 2008. "Competition between auctions," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 431-448, December.
    9. Axel Ockenfels & David Reiley & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2006. "Online Auctions," NBER Working Papers 12785, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Stéphanie Vincent Lyk-Jensen & Olivier Chanel, 2007. "Retailers and consumers in sequential auctions of collectibles," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 40(1), pages 278-295, February.
    11. Simon Grant & Atsushi Kajii & Flavio Menezes & Matthew J. Ryan, 2006. "Auctions with options to re‐auction," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 2(1), pages 17-39, March.
    12. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2020. "Improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2020-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    13. Hu, Audrey & Matthews, Steven A. & Zou, Liang, 2010. "Risk aversion and optimal reserve prices in first- and second-price auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 1188-1202, May.
    14. Rittwik Chatterjee, 2013. "A Brief Survey of the Theory of Auction," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 2(2), pages 169-191, December.
    15. Johannes Horner & Julian Jamison, 2006. "Private Information in Sequential Common-Value Auctions," Discussion Papers 1422, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    16. Santiago R. Balseiro & Omar Besbes & Gabriel Y. Weintraub, 2019. "Dynamic Mechanism Design with Budget-Constrained Buyers Under Limited Commitment," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 67(3), pages 711-730, May.
    17. Audrey Hu & Liang Zou, 2016. "Sequential Auctions with Generalized Interdependent Values," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-016/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    18. Ye, Lixin, 2007. "Indicative bidding and a theory of two-stage auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 181-207, January.
    19. Malueg, David A. & Orzach, Ram, 2009. "Revenue comparison in common-value auctions: Two examples," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 177-180, November.
    20. Olivier Chanel & Stéphanie Vincent, 2004. "Computing price trends in sequential auctions," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 70(4), pages 443-460.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sequential auctions; Efficiency; Optimal mechanism ; Order; Reserve prices; D44; D82;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:spr:reecde:v:18:y:2014:i:1:p:11-35. 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.