IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/levarc/786969000000000898.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Extremal Information Structures in the First Price Auction

Author

Listed:
  • Dirk Bergemann
  • Benjamin A. Brooks
  • Stephen Morris

Abstract

We study how the outcomes of a private-value first price auction can vary with bidders' information, for a fixed distribution of private values. In a two bidder, two value, setting, we characterize all combinations of bidder surplus and revenue that can arise, and identify the information structure that minimizes revenue. The extremal information structure that minimizes revenue entails each bidder observing a noisy and correlated signal about the other bidder's value. In the general environment with many bidders and many values, we characterize the minimum bidder surplus of each bidder and maximum revenue across all information structures. The extremal information structure that simultaneously attains these bounds entails an efficient allocation, bidders knowing whether they will win or lose, losers bidding their true value and winners being induced to bid high by partial information about the highest losing bid. Our analysis uses a linear algebraic characterization of equilibria across all information structures, and we report simulations of properties of the set of all equilibria.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin A. Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2014. "Extremal Information Structures in the First Price Auction," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000898, David K. Levine.
    • Handle: RePEc:cla:levarc:786969000000000898
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.dklevine.com/archive/refs4786969000000000898.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Helmuts Āzacis & Péter Vida, 2015. "Collusive communication schemes in a first-price auction," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 58(1), pages 125-160, January.
    2. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2015. "The Limits of Price Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 921-957, March.
    3. Kim, Jinwoo & Che, Yeon-Koo, 2004. "Asymmetric information about rivals' types in standard auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 383-397, February.
    4. Eddie Dekel & Asher Wolinsky, 2000. "Rationalizable Outcomes of Large Independent Private-Value First Price Discrete Auctions," Discussion Papers 1308, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    5. Hanming Fang & Stephen Morris, 2012. "Multidimensional Private Value Auctions," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 9, pages 319-356, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. 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.
    7. Battigalli, Pierpaolo & Siniscalchi, Marciano, 2003. "Rationalizable bidding in first-price auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 38-72, October.
    8. FORGES , Françoise, 1993. "Five Legitimate Definitions of Correlated Equilibrium in Games with Incomplete Information," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 1993009, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    9. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    10. Dekel, Eddie & Wolinsky, Asher, 2003. "Rationalizable outcomes of large private-value first-price discrete auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 175-188, May.
    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. Bergemann, Dirk & Morris, Stephen, 2016. "Bayes correlated equilibrium and the comparison of information structures in games," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(2), May.
    2. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2013. "Robust Predictions in Games With Incomplete Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(4), pages 1251-1308, July.
    3. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2015. "The Limits of Price Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 921-957, March.
    4. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2017. "First‐Price Auctions With General Information Structures: Implications for Bidding and Revenue," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 107-143, January.
    5. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2013. "The Comparison of Information Structures in Games: Bayes Correlated Equilibrium and Individual Sufficiency," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1909R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised May 2014.
    6. Gregory Pavlov, 2013. "Correlated Equilibria and Communication Equilibria in All-pay Auctions," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 20132, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    7. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2013. "Bayes Correlated Equilibrium and the Comparison of Information Structures," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000725, David K. Levine.

    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. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2017. "First‐Price Auctions With General Information Structures: Implications for Bidding and Revenue," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 107-143, January.
    2. Hanming Fang & Stephen Morris, 2012. "Multidimensional Private Value Auctions," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 9, pages 319-356, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Makoto Shimoji, 2017. "Revenue comparison of discrete private-value auctions via weak dominance," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 21(4), pages 231-252, December.
    4. 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.
    5. Battigalli Pierpaolo & Siniscalchi Marciano, 2003. "Rationalization and Incomplete Information," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-46, June.
    6. Lavi, Ron & Nisan, Noam, 2015. "Online ascending auctions for gradually expiring items," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 45-76.
    7. Bernhard Kasberger & Karl H. Schlag, 2017. "Robust Bidding in First-Price Auctions: How to Bid without Knowing what Otheres are Doing," Vienna Economics Papers 1707, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    8. Bernhard Kasberger & Karl H. Schlag, 2024. "Robust Bidding in First-Price Auctions: How to Bid Without Knowing What Others Are Doing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(7), pages 4219-4235, July.
    9. Pierpaolo Battigalli, 2006. "Rationalization In Signaling Games: Theory And Applications," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(01), pages 67-93.
    10. Morath, Florian & Münster, Johannes, 2008. "Private versus complete information in auctions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 214-216, December.
    11. Andreoni, James & Che, Yeon-Koo & Kim, Jinwoo, 2007. "Asymmetric information about rivals' types in standard auctions: An experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 240-259, May.
    12. Harry J. Paarsch & Jacques Robert, 2003. "Testing Equilibrium Behaviour At First-Price, Sealed-Bid Auctions With Discrete Bid Increments," CIRANO Working Papers 2003s-32, CIRANO.
    13. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Marciano Siniscalchi, "undated". "Rationalizable Bidding in General First-Price Auctions," Working Papers 190, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    14. Azrieli Yaron & Levin Dan, 2012. "Dominance Solvability of Large k-Price Auctions," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-11, May.
    15. Helmuts Āzacis & Péter Vida, 2015. "Collusive communication schemes in a first-price auction," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 58(1), pages 125-160, January.
    16. Azrieli, Yaron & Levin, Dan, 2011. "Dominance-solvable common-value large auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 301-309.
    17. Moreira, Humberto Ataíde & Araújo, Aloísio Pessoa de & Castro Filho, Luciano I. de, 2004. "Pure strategy equilibria of multidimensional and non-monotonic auctions," FGV EPGE Economics Working Papers (Ensaios Economicos da EPGE) 571, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil).
    18. Hyeon Park, 2019. "Multi-bidder First Price Auction with Beliefs," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 7(1), pages 140-160, June.
    19. Jack Robles & Makoto Shimoji, "undated". "On Rationalizable Outcomes in Private-Value First-Price Discrete Auctions," Discussion Papers 09/21, Department of Economics, University of York.
    20. Zhuoqiong Chen, 2021. "All-pay auctions with private signals about opponents’ values," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 25(1), pages 33-64, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    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:cla:levarc:786969000000000898. 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: David K. Levine (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.dklevine.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.