IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2511.10349.html

Private From Whom? Minimal Information Leakage in Auctions

Author

Listed:
  • Eric Gao
  • Eric Tang

Abstract

In many auctions, bidders may be reluctant to reveal private information to the auctioneer and other bidders. Among deterministic bilateral communication protocols, reducing what bidders learn requires increasing what the auctioneer learns. A protocol implementing a given social choice rule is on the privacy Pareto frontier if no alternative protocol reveals less to both bidders and the auctioneer. For first-price auctions, the descending protocol and the sealed-bid protocol are both on the privacy Pareto frontier. For second-price auctions, the ascending protocol and the ascending-join protocol of Haupt and Hitzig (2025) are both on the privacy Pareto frontier, but the sealed-bid protocol is not. A designer can flexibly trade off between what bidders learn and what the auctioneer learns by "stitching" different protocols together.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Gao & Eric Tang, 2025. "Private From Whom? Minimal Information Leakage in Auctions," Papers 2511.10349, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2511.10349
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.10349
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Milgrom & Ilya Segal, 2020. "Clock Auctions and Radio Spectrum Reallocation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(1), pages 1-31.
    2. Lawrence M. Ausubel, 2004. "An Efficient Ascending-Bid Auction for Multiple Objects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1452-1475, December.
    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. Loertscher, Simon & Marx, Leslie M., 2020. "A dominant-strategy asset market mechanism," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 1-15.
    2. Ryuji Sano, 2021. "Dynamic communication mechanism design," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(1), pages 163-180, July.
    3. 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.
    4. Mackenzie, Andrew & Zhou, Yu, 2022. "Menu mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    5. Loertscher, Simon & Marx, Leslie M., 2020. "Asymptotically optimal prior-free clock auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    6. Yu, Hao & Huang, Min & Song, Yang & Wang, Xingwei & Yue, Xiaohang, 2025. "Making the most of your private parking slot: Strategy-proof double auctions-enabled staggered sharing schemes," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    7. Neil Newman & Kevin Leyton-Brown & Paul Milgrom & Ilya Segal, 2024. "Incentive Auction Design Alternatives: A Simulation Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(11), pages 8187-8215, November.
    8. Le, Phuong, 2018. "Pareto optimal budgeted combinatorial auctions," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(2), May.
    9. Shrestha, Ratna K., 2017. "Menus of price-quantity contracts for inducing the truth in environmental regulation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 1-7.
    10. Mishra, Debasis & Parkes, David C., 2007. "Ascending price Vickrey auctions for general valuations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 335-366, January.
    11. Ingebretsen Carlson, Jim, 2015. "An Approximate Auction," Working Papers 2015:19, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    12. Loertscher, Simon & Mezzetti, Claudio, 2021. "A dominant strategy, double clock auction with estimation-based tatonnement," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(3), July.
    13. Samuel D. Bell & Nadia A. Streletskaya, 2019. "The Random Quantity Mechanism: Laboratory and Field Tests of a Novel Cost-Revealing Procurement Mechanism," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 73(3), pages 899-921, July.
    14. Dan Levin, 2005. "Demand Reduction in Multi-Unit Auctions: Evidence from a Sportscard Field Experiment: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 467-471, March.
    15. Ayman Chouayakh & Aurélien Bechler & Isabel Amigo & Loutfi Nuaymi & Patrick Maillé, 2021. "A truthful ascending auction mechanism for dynamic allocation of LSA spectrum blocks," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 27-52, June.
    16. Robert Kleinberg & Bo Waggoner & E. Glen Weyl, 2016. "Descending Price Optimally Coordinates Search," Papers 1603.07682, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2016.
    17. Dütting, Paul & Talgam-Cohen, Inbal & Roughgarden, Tim, 2017. "Modularity and greed in double auctions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 83199, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Breitmoser, Yves & Schweighofer-Kodritsch, Sebastian, 2019. "Obviousness around the clock," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2019-203, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    19. A. Talman & Zaifu Yang, 2015. "An efficient multi-item dynamic auction with budget constrained bidders," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 44(3), pages 769-784, August.
    20. Ranaldo, Angelo & Rossi, Enzo, 2016. "Uniform-price Auctions for Swiss Government Bonds: Origin and Evolution," Working Papers on Finance 1609, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2511.10349. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.