IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/vrs/crebss/v7y2021i1p43-59n3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Auction theory and a note on game mechanisms

Author

Listed:
  • Josheski Dushko

    (University Goce Delcev-Shtip, R. North Macedonia)

  • Karamazova Elena

    (University Goce Delcev-Shtip, R. North Macedonia)

Abstract

This paper will review important topics on the subject of auction theory and mechanism design, these include: efficiency first and foremost, also revenue comparison between different types of auctions and the issue of incentive compatibility, individual rationality with the general idea and proof that bilateral trade is inefficient. Mechanism design theory tells us that if buyers and sellers both have private information full efficiency is impossible, however Vickrey auction (single unit auction) will be efficient i.e. will put the goods in the hands of the buyers that value them most. However, the conclusion from this paper is that because of overvaluation of bidders the main result is inefficient, i.e. bids are too high. When weak and strong bidders are compared the main conclusion is that strong bidders’ expected payoff is higher in second price auction (SPA), while weak bidder prefers first price auction (FPA) bid.

Suggested Citation

  • Josheski Dushko & Karamazova Elena, 2021. "Auction theory and a note on game mechanisms," Croatian Review of Economic, Business and Social Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 7(1), pages 43-59, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:vrs:crebss:v:7:y:2021:i:1:p:43-59:n:3
    DOI: 10.2478/crebss-2021-0004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2478/crebss-2021-0004
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2478/crebss-2021-0004?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Sanford J, 1981. "The Informational Role of Warranties and Private Disclosure about Product Quality," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 461-483, December.
    2. Bulow, Jeremy & Roberts, John, 1989. "The Simple Economics of Optimal Auctions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1060-1090, October.
    3. Green, Jerry & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1977. "Characterization of Satisfactory Mechanisms for the Revelation of Preferences for Public Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(2), pages 427-438, March.
    4. Hurwicz, Leonid, 1973. "The Design of Mechanisms for Resource Allocation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 1-30, May.
    5. McAfee, R. Preston & McMillan, John, 1987. "Auctions with entry," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 343-347.
    6. Myerson, Roger B, 1979. "Incentive Compatibility and the Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(1), pages 61-73, January.
    7. Myerson, Roger B. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1983. "Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 265-281, April.
    8. Milgrom, Paul R, 1979. "A Convergence Theorem for Competitive Bidding with Differential Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(3), pages 679-688, May.
    9. Gul, Faruk & Stacchetti, Ennio, 2000. "The English Auction with Differentiated Commodities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 66-95, May.
    10. Riley, John G & Samuelson, William F, 1981. "Optimal Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 381-392, June.
    11. Robert G. Hansen, 1988. "Auctions with Endogenous Quantity," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 19(1), pages 44-58, Spring.
    12. Milgrom, Paul & Weber, Robert J., 1982. "The value of information in a sealed-bid auction," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 105-114, June.
    13. Satterthwaite, Mark Allen, 1975. "Strategy-proofness and Arrow's conditions: Existence and correspondence theorems for voting procedures and social welfare functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 187-217, April.
    14. Fibich, Gadi & Gavish, Nir, 2011. "Numerical simulations of asymmetric first-price auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 479-495.
    15. Robert B. Wilson, 1967. "Competitive Bidding with Asymmetric Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(11), pages 816-820, July.
    16. Graham, Daniel A & Marshall, Robert C, 1987. "Collusive Bidder Behavior at Single-Object Second-Price and English Auctions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(6), pages 1217-1239, December.
    17. Edward Clarke, 1971. "Multipart pricing of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 17-33, September.
    18. Engelbrecht-Wiggans, Richard & Milgrom, Paul R. & Weber, Robert J., 1983. "Competitive bidding and proprietary information," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 161-169, April.
    19. Christopher Avery, 1998. "Strategic Jump Bidding in English Auctions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 65(2), pages 185-210.
    20. Robert Wilson, 1977. "A Bidding Model of Perfect Competition," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 511-518.
    21. Milgrom,Paul, 2004. "Putting Auction Theory to Work," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521536721.
    22. Robert Wilson, 1979. "Auctions of Shares," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(4), pages 675-689.
    23. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    24. Green, Jerry & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1977. "On the revelation of preferences for public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 79-93, August.
    25. William Vickrey, 1961. "Counterspeculation, Auctions, And Competitive Sealed Tenders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 16(1), pages 8-37, March.
    26. Robert B. Wilson, 1969. "Communications to the Editor--Competitive Bidding with Disparate Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(7), pages 446-452, March.
    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. Klemperer, Paul D & Meyer, Margaret A, 1989. "Supply Function Equilibria in Oligopoly under Uncertainty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(6), pages 1243-1277, November.
    29. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Maskin, Eric, 1980. "A Differential Approach to Dominant Strategy Mechanisms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(6), pages 1507-1520, September.
    30. McAfee, R Preston & McMillan, John, 1987. "Auctions and Bidding," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 25(2), pages 699-738, June.
    31. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    32. S.J. Rassenti & V.L. Smith & R.L. Bulfin, 1982. "A Combinatorial Auction Mechanism for Airport Time Slot Allocation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 402-417, Autumn.
    33. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    34. Gibbard, Allan, 1973. "Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 587-601, July.
    35. Back, Kerry & Zender, Jaime F, 1993. "Auctions of Divisible Goods: On the Rationale for the Treasury Experiment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(4), pages 733-764.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2020. "Improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2020-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    2. Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1997. "Game theory and empirical economics: The case of auction data 1," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 1-35, January.
    3. Dilip Mookherjee, 2008. "The 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Mechanism Design Theory," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 110(2), pages 237-260, June.
    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. Roberto Burguet, 2000. "Auction theory: a guided tour," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 24(1), pages 3-50, January.
    6. Alexander Teytelboym & Shengwu Li & Scott Duke Kominers & Mohammad Akbarpour & Piotr Dworczak, 2021. "Discovering Auctions: Contributions of Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 123(3), pages 709-750, July.
    7. Ronald M. Harstad & Aleksandar Saša Pekeč, 2008. "Relevance to Practice and Auction Theory: A Memorial Essay for Michael Rothkopf," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 38(5), pages 367-380, October.
    8. Etro, Federico, 2017. "Research in economics and game theory. A 70th anniversary," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 1-7.
    9. Jean-Jacques Laffont, 1998. "Théorie des jeux et économie empirique : le cas des données issues d'enchères," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 132(1), pages 121-137.
    10. Eric Maskin, 2004. "The Unity of Auction Theory: Paul Milgrom's Masterclass," Economics Working Papers 0044, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
    11. Philippe Jehiel & Benny Moldovanu, 2005. "Allocative and Informational Externalities in Auctions and Related Mechanisms," Levine's Bibliography 784828000000000490, UCLA Department of Economics.
    12. Robert B. Wilson, 2021. "Strategic Analysis of Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(2), pages 555-561, March.
    13. Vijay Krishna & Motty Perry, 1997. "Efficient Mechanism Design," Game Theory and Information 9703010, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 28 Apr 1998.
    14. Szentes, Balazs, 2005. "Equilibrium transformations and the Revenue Equivalence Theorem," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 175-205, February.
    15. Marek Pycia & Peter Troyan, 2021. "A theory of simplicity in games and mechanism design," ECON - Working Papers 393, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    16. Jeremy Bulow & Paul Klemperer, 2007. "When are Auctions Best?," Economics Papers 2007-W03, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    17. Philippe Jehiel & Laurent Lamy, 2018. "A Mechanism Design Approach to the Tiebout Hypothesis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 735-760.
    18. Corchón, Luis C., 2008. "The theory of implementation : what did we learn?," UC3M Working papers. Economics we081207, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    19. Ledyard, John O., "undated". "Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research," Working Papers 861, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    asymmetric auctions; first price auction; Green-Laffont; Myerson-Satterthwaite; second price auction;
    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:vrs:crebss:v:7:y:2021:i:1:p:43-59:n:3. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciendo.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.