IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20100090.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Herodotus Paradox

Author

Listed:
  • Michael R. Baye

    (Indiana University)

  • Dan Kovenock

    (University of Iowa)

  • Casper G. de Vries

    (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Abstract

This discussion paper led to a publication in 'Games and Economic Behavior' , 74(1), 399-406. The Babylonian bridal auction, described by Herodotus, is regarded as one of the earliest uses of an auction in history. Yet, to our knowledge, the literature lacks a formal equilibrium analysis of this auction. We provide such an analysis for the twoplayer case with complete and incompete information, and in so doing identify what we call the "Herodotus Paradox".

Suggested Citation

  • Michael R. Baye & Dan Kovenock & Casper G. de Vries, 2010. "The Herodotus Paradox," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 10-090/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20100090
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/10090.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Baye & Dan Kovenock & Casper Vries, 2012. "Contests with rank-order spillovers," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 51(2), pages 315-350, October.
    2. Baye, Michael R. & Kovenock, Dan & de Vries, Casper G., 2012. "The Herodotus paradox," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 399-406.
    3. Bhattacharyya, Sugato & Lipman, Barton L, 1995. "Ex ante versus Interim Rationality and the Existence of Bubbles," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 6(3), pages 469-494, November.
    4. Riley, John G & Samuelson, William F, 1981. "Optimal Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 381-392, June.
    5. Maskin, Eric S & Riley, John G, 1984. "Optimal Auctions with Risk Averse Buyers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1473-1518, November.
    6. Milgrom, Paul R & Weber, Robert J, 1982. "A Theory of Auctions and Competitive Bidding," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(5), pages 1089-1122, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. An analysis of the oldest auction in history
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2011-01-05 21:52:00

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kaplan, Todd R. & Zamir, Shmuel, 2015. "Advances in Auctions," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    2. Baye, Michael R. & Kovenock, Dan & de Vries, Casper G., 2012. "The Herodotus paradox," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 399-406.
    3. Ispano, Alessandro, 2015. "A note on the equilibria of the unbounded traveler’s dilemma," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 52-54.
    4. Fey, Mark, 2024. "An undecidable statement regarding zero-sum games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 19-26.

    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. Kaplan, Todd R. & Zamir, Shmuel, 2015. "Advances in Auctions," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    2. Hu, Audrey & Offerman, Theo & Zou, Liang, 2011. "Premium auctions and risk preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2420-2439.
    3. Matthews, Steven, 1987. "Comparing Auctions for Risk Averse Buyers: A Buyer's Point of View," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 633-646, May.
    4. Syngjoo Choi & Lars Nesheim & Imran Rasul, 2016. "Reserve Price Effects In Auctions: Estimates From Multiple Regression-Discontinuity Designs," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(1), pages 294-314, January.
    5. Giuseppe Lopomo, 2004. "Optimality and Robustness of the English Auction," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000391, UCLA Department of Economics.
    6. Paarsch, Harry J., 1997. "Deriving an estimate of the optimal reserve price: An application to British Columbian timber sales," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 333-357, June.
    7. Hu, Youxin & Kagel, John & Xu, Xiaoshu & Ye, Lixin, 2013. "Theoretical and experimental analysis of auctions with negative externalities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 269-291.
    8. Yonghong Long, 2009. "Bidders¡¯ Risk Preferences in Discriminative Auctions," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 10(1), pages 215-223, May.
    9. 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-.
    10. Anne Épaulard & Jean-Pierre Laffargue & Pierre Malgrange, 2008. "Présentation générale," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(2), pages 1-13.
    11. 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..
    12. Péter Esö & Lucy White, 2004. "Precautionary Bidding in Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 77-92, January.
    13. Wayne-Roy Gayle, 2005. "Numerical Analysis of Asymmetric First Price Auctions," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 472, Society for Computational Economics.
    14. Cox, James C. & Sadiraj, Vjollca, 2006. "Small- and large-stakes risk aversion: Implications of concavity calibration for decision theory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 45-60, July.
    15. Li, Zhen & Kuo, Ching-Chung, 2011. "Revenue-maximizing Dutch auctions with discrete bid levels," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 215(3), pages 721-729, December.
    16. Hon-Snir, Shlomit & Monderer, Dov & Sela, Aner, 1998. "A Learning Approach to Auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 65-88, September.
    17. Ramanathan Subramaniam & R. Venkatesh, 2009. "Optimal Bundling Strategies in Multiobject Auctions of Complements or Substitutes," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(2), pages 264-273, 03-04.
    18. Wayne-Roy Gayle & Jean Richard, 2008. "Numerical Solutions of Asymmetric, First-Price, Independent Private Values Auctions," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 32(3), pages 245-278, October.
    19. Söllner, Matthias, 2008. "Menschliches Verhalten in elektronischen Märkten," Bayreuth Reports on Information Systems Management 34, University of Bayreuth, Chair of Information Systems Management.
    20. Pitchik, Carolyn, 2009. "Budget-constrained sequential auctions with incomplete information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 928-949, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    second price; transfer to loser;

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:tin:wpaper:20100090. 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: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.html .

    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.