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When to sell an indivisible object: Optimal timing with Markovian buyers

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  • Kiho Yoon

Abstract

We study the problem of when to sell an indivisible object. There is a monopolistic seller who owns an indivisible object and plans to sell it over a given span of time to the set of potential buyers whose valuations for the object evolve over time. We formulate the seller's problem as a dynamic mechanism design problem. We provide the procedure for finding the optimal solution and show how to check incentive compatibility. We also examine sufficient conditions for the optimality of myopic stopping rule and ex-post individual rationality. In addition, we present some comparative static results regarding the seller's revenue and the selling time.

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  • Kiho Yoon, 2021. "When to sell an indivisible object: Optimal timing with Markovian buyers," Papers 2105.07649, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2022.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2105.07649
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