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A Very Robust Auction Mechanism

Author

Listed:
  • Richard McLean

    (Department of Economics, Rutgers University)

  • Andrew Postlewaite

    (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

A single unit of a good is to be sold by auction to one of many potential buyers. There are two equally likely states of the world. Potential buyers receive noisy signals of the state of the world. The accuracies of buyers ’signals may di¤er. A buyer’s valuation is the sum of a common value component that depends on the state and an idiosyncratic private value component independent of the state. The seller knows nothing about the accuracies of the signals or about buyers’ beliefs about the accuracies. It is common knowledge among buyers that the accuracies of the signals are conditionally independent and uniformly bounded below 1 and above 1=2, and nothing more. We demonstrate a modifi…ed second price auction that has the property that, for any " > 0; the seller’s expected revenue will be within " of the highest buyer expected value when the number of buyers is sufficiently large and buyers make undominated bids.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard McLean & Andrew Postlewaite, 2018. "A Very Robust Auction Mechanism," PIER Working Paper Archive 18-001, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 16 Jan 2018.
    • Handle: RePEc:pen:papers:18-001
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. McLean, Richard P. & Postlewaite, Andrew, 2017. "A dynamic non-direct implementation mechanism for interdependent value problems," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 34-48.
    3. Songzi Du, 2018. "Robust Mechanisms Under Common Valuation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1569-1588, September.
    4. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    5. Borgers, Tilman & Krahmer, Daniel & Strausz, Roland, 2015. "An Introduction to the Theory of Mechanism Design," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199734023.
    6. Wolitzky, Alexander, 2016. "Mechanism design with maxmin agents: theory and an application to bilateral trade," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(3), September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Songzi Du, 2018. "Robust Mechanisms Under Common Valuation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1569-1588, September.
    2. Jin Xi & Haitian Xie, 2021. "Strength in Numbers: Robust Mechanisms for Public Goods with Many Agents," Papers 2101.02423, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.

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