IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/etbull/v3y2015i1d10.1007_s40505-014-0049-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Multiple equilibria in asymmetric first-price auctions

Author

Listed:
  • Todd R. Kaplan

    (University of Exeter Business School
    University of Haifa)

  • Shmuel Zamir

    (University of Exeter Business School
    The Hebrew University)

Abstract

Maskin and Riley (Games Econ Behav 45:395–409, 2003) and Lebrun (Games Econ Behav 55:131–151, 2006) prove that the Bayes–Nash equilibrium of first-price auctions is unique. This uniqueness requires the assumption that a buyer never bids above his value (which amounts to the elimination of weakly dominated strategies). We demonstrate that, in asymmetric first-price auctions (with or without a minimum bid), the relaxation of this assumption results in additional equilibria that are substantial. Although in each of these additional equilibria no buyer wins with a bids above his value, the allocation of the object and the selling price may vary among the equilibria. In particular, we show that these yield higher revenue. We show that such phenomena can only occur under certain types of asymmetry in the distributions of values.

Suggested Citation

  • Todd R. Kaplan & Shmuel Zamir, 2015. "Multiple equilibria in asymmetric first-price auctions," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 3(1), pages 65-77, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:etbull:v:3:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1007_s40505-014-0049-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s40505-014-0049-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40505-014-0049-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s40505-014-0049-1?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. Maskin, Eric & Riley, John, 2003. "Uniqueness of equilibrium in sealed high-bid auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 395-409, November.
    2. Baye, Michael R. & Morgan, John, 1999. "A folk theorem for one-shot Bertrand games," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 59-65, October.
    3. Kagel, John H & Levin, Dan, 1993. "Independent Private Value Auctions: Bidder Behaviour in First-, Second- and Third-Price Auctions with Varying Numbers of Bidders," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(419), pages 868-879, July.
    4. Blume, Andreas & Heidhues, Paul, 2004. "All equilibria of the Vickrey auction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 170-177, January.
    5. Todd Kaplan & Shmuel Zamir, 2012. "Asymmetric first-price auctions with uniform distributions: analytic solutions to the general case," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(2), pages 269-302, June.
    6. William Vickrey, 1961. "Counterspeculation, Auctions, And Competitive Sealed Tenders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 16(1), pages 8-37, March.
    7. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    8. Lebrun, Bernard, 2006. "Uniqueness of the equilibrium in first-price auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 131-151, April.
    9. Binmore, Ken, 1999. "Why Experiment in Economics?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(453), pages 16-24, February.
    10. Todd R. Kaplan & David Wettstein, 2000. "The possibility of mixed-strategy equilibria with constant-returns-to-scale technology under Bertrand competition," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 65-71.
    11. Blume, Andreas & Heidhues, Paul & Lafky, Jonathan & Münster, Johannes & Zhang, Meixia, 2009. "All equilibria of the multi-unit Vickrey auction," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 729-741, July.
    12. Blume, Andreas & Heidhues, Paul & Lafky, Jonathan & Münster, Johannes & Zhang, Meixia, 2006. "All Nash Equilibria of the Multi-Unit Vickrey Auction," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 116, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    13. Rodney Garratt & Mark Walker & John Wooders, 2012. "Behavior in second-price auctions by highly experienced eBay buyers and sellers," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(1), pages 44-57, March.
    14. Mathias Erlei, 2002. "Some forgotten equilibria of the Bertrand duopoly!?," TUC Working Papers in Economics 0004, Abteilung für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Technische Universität Clausthal (Department of Economics, Technical University Clausthal).
    15. Maschler,Michael & Solan,Eilon & Zamir,Shmuel, 2013. "Game Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107005488.
    16. McAdams, David, 2007. "Uniqueness in symmetric first-price auctions with affiliation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 144-166, 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. Kirkegaard, René, 2014. "Ranking asymmetric auctions: Filling the gap between a distributional shift and stretch," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 60-69.
    2. Cole, Matthew T. & Davies, Ronald B. & Kaplan, Todd, 2017. "Protection in government procurement auctions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 134-142.
    3. Martin Bichler & Nils Kohring & Stefan Heidekrüger, 2023. "Learning Equilibria in Asymmetric Auction Games," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 523-542, May.
    4. Domenico Colucci & Nicola Doni & Vincenzo Valori, 2015. "Information policies in procurement auctions with heterogeneous suppliers," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 114(3), pages 211-238, April.

    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. Kaplan, Todd R. & Zamir, Shmuel, 2015. "Advances in Auctions," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    2. 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.
    3. Kirkegaard, René, 2009. "Asymmetric first price auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1617-1635, July.
    4. Burkett, Justin & Woodward, Kyle, 2020. "Uniform price auctions with a last accepted bid pricing rule," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    5. Arieh Gavious & Yizhaq Minchuk, 2014. "Ranking asymmetric auctions," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(2), pages 369-393, May.
    6. Timothy P. Hubbard & Rene Kirkegaard, 2015. "Asymmetric Auctions with More Than Two Bidders," Working Papers 1502, University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance.
    7. Li, Huagang & Riley, John G., 2007. "Auction choice," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 1269-1298, December.
    8. repec:vuw:vuwscr:19224 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Hickman Brent R. & Hubbard Timothy P. & Sağlam Yiğit, 2012. "Structural Econometric Methods in Auctions: A Guide to the Literature," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 67-106, August.
    10. Timothy P. Hubbard & Harry J. Paarsch, 2012. "On the Numerical Solution of Equilibria in Auction Models with Asymmetries within the Private-Values Paradigm," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 291, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    11. Sağlam, Yiğit, 2012. "Structural Econometric Methods in Auctions: A Guide to the Literature," Working Paper Series 19224, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    12. Lorentziadis, Panos L., 2020. "Competitive bidding in asymmetric multidimensional public procurement," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 282(1), pages 211-220.
    13. Xi Chen & Binghui Peng, 2023. "Complexity of Equilibria in First-Price Auctions under General Tie-Breaking Rules," Papers 2303.16388, arXiv.org.
    14. Kotowski, Maciej H., 2018. "On asymmetric reserve prices," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), January.
    15. Cole, Matthew T. & Davies, Ronald B. & Kaplan, Todd, 2017. "Protection in government procurement auctions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 134-142.
    16. Agranov, Marina & Yariv, Leeat, 2018. "Collusion through communication in auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 93-108.
    17. Kirkegaard, René, 2021. "Ranking reversals in asymmetric auctions," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    18. Bernard Lebrun, 2015. "Revenue-superior variants of the second-price auction," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 59(2), pages 245-275, June.
    19. Monteiro, Paulo Klinger, 2009. "First-price auction symmetric equilibria with a general distribution," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 256-269, January.
    20. Hu, Audrey & Offerman, Theo & Zou, Liang, 2011. "Premium auctions and risk preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2420-2439.
    21. Nawar, Abdel-Hameed & Sen, Debapriya, 2018. "kth price auctions and Catalan numbers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 69-73.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Asymmetric auctions; First-price auctions; Multiple equilibria;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions

    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:etbull:v:3:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1007_s40505-014-0049-1. 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.