IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joecth/v51y2012i1p105-137.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Seller competition by mechanism design

Author

Listed:
  • Damian Damianov

Abstract

This paper analyzes a market game in which sellers offer trading mechanisms to buyers and buyers decide which seller to go to depending on the trading mechanisms offered. In a (subgame perfect) equilibrium of this market, sellers hold auctions with an efficient reserve price but charge an entry fee. The entry fee depends on the number of buyers and sellers, the distribution of buyer valuations, and the buyer cost of entering the market. As the size of the market increases, the entry fee decreases and converges to zero in the limit. We study how the surplus of buyers and sellers depends on the number of agents on each side of the market in this decentralized trading environment. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Damian Damianov, 2012. "Seller competition by mechanism design," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 51(1), pages 105-137, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:joecth:v:51:y:2012:i:1:p:105-137
    DOI: 10.1007/s00199-010-0597-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00199-010-0597-z
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00199-010-0597-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 look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bulow, Jeremy & Klemperer, Paul, 1996. "Auctions versus Negotiations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 180-194, March.
    2. Moldovanu, Benny & Sela, Aner & Shi, Xianwen, 2008. "Competing auctions with endogenous quantities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 141(1), pages 1-27, July.
    3. B. Douglas Bernheim & Michael D. Whinston, 1986. "Menu Auctions, Resource Allocation, and Economic Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(1), pages 1-31.
    4. Peters, Michael, 2001. "Common Agency and the Revelation Principle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(5), pages 1349-1372, September.
    5. Michael Peters, 1997. "A Competitive Distribution of Auctions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(1), pages 97-123.
    6. Marmer, Vadim & Shneyerov, Artyom & Xu, Pai, 2013. "What model for entry in first-price auctions? A nonparametric approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 176(1), pages 46-58.
    7. Martin Sefton & Abdullah Yavas & Eric Abrams, 2000. "An experimental comparison of two search models," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 16(3), pages 735-749.
    8. McAfee, R Preston, 1993. "Mechanism Design by Competing Sellers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(6), pages 1281-1312, November.
    9. Burguet, Roberto & Sakovics, Jozsef, 1999. "Imperfect Competition in Auction Designs," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 40(1), pages 231-247, February.
    10. Steven R. Williams, 1999. "A characterization of efficient, bayesian incentive compatible mechanisms," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 14(1), pages 155-180.
    11. Peters, Michael & Severinov, Sergei, 1997. "Competition among Sellers Who Offer Auctions Instead of Prices," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 141-179, July.
    12. ,, 2010. "Competing auctions: finite markets and convergence," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 5(2), May.
    13. Eeckhout, Jan & Kircher, Philipp, 2010. "Sorting versus screening: Search frictions and competing mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(4), pages 1354-1385, July.
    14. Richard Engelbrecht-Wiggans, 1987. "On Optimal Reservation Prices in Auctions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(6), pages 763-770, June.
    15. Riley, John G & Samuelson, William F, 1981. "Optimal Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 381-392, June.
    16. Chakraborty, Indranil & Kosmopoulou, Georgia, 2001. "Auctions with endogenous entry," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 195-200, August.
    17. McAfee, R Preston & McMillan, John, 1987. "Auctions and Bidding," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 25(2), pages 699-738, June.
    18. Peck, James, 1996. "Competition in Transactions Mechanisms: The Emergence of Price Competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 109-123, September.
    19. Jingfeng Lu, 2009. "Auction design with opportunity cost," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 38(1), pages 73-103, January.
    20. Samuelson, William F., 1985. "Competitive bidding with entry costs," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 17(1-2), pages 53-57.
    21. McAfee, R. Preston & McMillan, John, 1987. "Auctions with entry," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 343-347.
    22. Gresik, Thomas A. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1989. "The rate at which a simple market converges to efficiency as the number of traders increases: An asymptotic result for optimal trading mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 304-332, June.
    23. Hernando-Veciana, Angel, 2005. "Competition among auctioneers in large markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 107-127, March.
    24. Mark A. Satterthwaite & Steven R. Williams, 1989. "The Rate of Convergence to Efficiency in the Buyer's Bid Double Auction as the Market Becomes Large," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(4), pages 477-498.
    25. Peters Michael, 1994. "Equilibrium Mechanisms in a Decentralized Market," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 390-423, December.
    26. Timothy Salmon & Bart Wilson, 2008. "Second chance offers versus sequential auctions: theory and behavior," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 34(1), pages 47-67, January.
    27. Levin, Dan & Smith, James L, 1994. "Equilibrium in Auctions with Entry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 585-599, June.
    28. Epstein, Larry G. & Peters, Michael, 1999. "A Revelation Principle for Competing Mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 119-160, September.
    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. Joyce Delnoij & Kris Jaegher, 2020. "Competing first-price and second-price auctions," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(1), pages 183-216, February.
    2. J.M.J. Delnoij & K.J.M. De Jaegher, 2016. "Competing first-price and second-price auctions," Working Papers 16-07, Utrecht School of Economics.
    3. Diego Carrasco-Novoa & Allan Hernández-Chanto, 2022. "Competing Sellers in Security-Bid Auctions under Risk-Averse Bidders," Discussion Papers Series 655, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    4. Wei-Torng Juang & Guang-Zhen Sun & Kuo-Chih Yuan, 2020. "A model of parallel contests," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(2), pages 651-672, June.

    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. Roberto Burguet, 2000. "Auction theory: a guided tour," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 24(1), pages 3-50, January.
    2. Deltas, George & Jeitschko, Thomas D., 2007. "Auction hosting site pricing and market equilibrium with endogenous bidder and seller participation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 1190-1212, December.
    3. Axel Ockenfels & David Reiley & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2006. "Online Auctions," NBER Working Papers 12785, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Attar, Andrea & Campioni, Eloisa & Piaser, Gwenaël, 2018. "On competing mechanisms under exclusive competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 1-15.
    5. Lester, Benjamin & Visschers, Ludo & Wolthoff, Ronald, 2017. "Competing with asking prices," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(2), May.
    6. Ronald Wolthoff & Lodewijk Visschers & Benjamin Lester, 2012. "Asking Prices and Inspection Goods," 2012 Meeting Papers 792, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Jehiel, Philippe & Lamy, Laurent, 2014. "On discrimination in procurement auctions," CEPR Discussion Papers 9790, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Philippe Jehiel & Laurent Lamy, 2011. "Absolute auctions and secret reserve prices: Why are they used?," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000316, David K. Levine.
    9. Feess, Eberhard & Grund, Christian & Walzl, Markus & Wohlschlegel, Ansgar, 2020. "Competing trade mechanisms and monotone mechanism choice," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 280(3), pages 1108-1121.
    10. Han, Seungjin, 2015. "Robust competitive auctions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 207-210.
    11. J.M.J. Delnoij & K.J.M. De Jaegher, 2016. "Competing first-price and second-price auctions," Working Papers 16-07, Utrecht School of Economics.
    12. 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).
    13. Peters, Michael & Severinov, Sergei, 2006. "Internet auctions with many traders," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 220-245, September.
    14. Chen, Jiafeng & Kominers, Scott Duke, 2021. "Auctioneers sometimes prefer entry fees to extra bidders," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    15. Lester, Benjamin & Visschers, Ludo & Wolthoff, Ronald, 2015. "Dynamic Relational Contracts under Complete Information," SIRE Discussion Papers 2015-51, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    16. Xiaoming Cai & Pieter Gautier & Ronald Wolthoff, 2023. "Meetings And Mechanisms," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(1), pages 155-185, February.
    17. Ángel Hernando Veciana, 2001. "Competition Among Auctioneers," Working Papers. Serie AD 2001-18, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    18. Virág, Gábor, 2011. "High profit equilibria in directed search models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 224-234, January.
    19. Benjamin Lester & Ludo Visschers & Ronald Wolthoff, 2014. "Competing with Asking Prices (first version)," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 243, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    20. Forand, Jean Guillaume, 2013. "Competing through information provision," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 438-451.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Seller competition; Endogenous entry; Auctions; 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:joecth:v:51:y:2012:i:1:p:105-137. 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.