A competitive economy is studied in which sellers offer alternative direct mechanisms to buyers who have correlated private information about their valuations. In contrast to the monopoly case where sellers charge entry fees and extract all buyers surplus, it is shown that in the \emph{unique} symmetric equilibrium with competition, sellers hold second price auctions with reserve prices set equal to their cost. Most important, it is a best reply for sellers not to charge entry fees of the kind normally used to extract surplus, even though it is feasible for them to do so.
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Paper provided by University of Toronto, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
peters-97-02.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search, Learning, and Information D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Auctions
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.:
Jeremy Bulow & Paul Klemperer, 1994.
"Auctions vs. Negotiations,"
NBER Working Papers
4608, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Riley, John G & Samuelson, William F, 1981.
"Optimal Auctions,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 381-92, June.
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