Optimal auctions with financially constrained buyers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Pai, Mallesh M.; Vohra, Rakesh
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2013.09.015
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 383-425
• 关键词: Optimal auction; budget constraints; Reduced form; multidimensional mechanism design

摘要

We study the sale of an indivisible good to liquidity constrained buyers: they cannot pay more than their budget regardless of their valuation. Both valuation and budget are private information. We derive the symmetric revenue maximizing and constrained efficient auctions in this setting. We show an implementation via a modified all-pay auction. The highest bidder need not win the good outright, or, stated differently, the auction has pooling, despite the usual regularity conditions. Subsidizing low budget buyers cannot increase revenue. From a technical standpoint, we contribute to auction design with multidimensional private information by working directly with reduced-form allocation rules. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.