In the basic auction model, the optimal reserve price may depend on the number of bidders

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Menicucci, Domenico
• 署名单位: University of Florence
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2021.105371
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Second price auction; reserve price; Virtual valuation

摘要

A widespread claim in the auction literature about the most well known auction setting with i.i.d. private values is that the optimal reserve price for a second price auction is independent of the number n of bidders. This is indeed the case if the virtual valuation function is increasing, but this result fails to hold if the virtual valuation is non-monotone. In such case the optimal reserve price is weakly increasing in n and, as n tends to infinity, it tends to the highest regular valuation with zero virtual value. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.