We consider a multi-period auction with a seller who has a single object for sale, a large population of potential buyers, and a mediator of the trade. The seller and every buyer have independent private values of the object. The mediator designs an auction mechanism which maximizes her revenue subject to certain constraints for the traders. In each period the seller auctions the object to a set of buyers drawn at random from the population. The seller can re-auction the object (infinitely many times) if it is not sold in previous interactions. We characterize the class of mediator-optimal auction mechanisms. One of such mechanisms is a Vickrey auction with a reserve price where the seller pays to the mediator a fixed percentage from the closing price.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Center for Rationality and Interactive Decision Theory, Hebrew University, Jerusalem in its series Discussion Paper Series with number
dp424.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
R. Preston McAfee & Daniel Vincent, 1994.
"Sequentially Optimal Auctions,"
Discussion Papers
1104, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
[Downloadable!]