The value of information for auctioneers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hagedorn, Marcus
• 署名单位: University of Zurich
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2009.04.002
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 2197-2208
• 关键词: Endogenous information; mechanism design; Asymmetric information structures; common values

摘要

An auctioneer wants to sell an indivisible object to one of multiple bidders, who have private information about their valuations of the object. A bidder's information structure determines the accuracy with which the bidder knows her private valuation. The main result of the paper is that the auctioneer's revenue is a convex function of bidders' information structures. One implication is that assigning asymmetric information structures instead of symmetric information structures to bidders is always revenue-enhancing. This paper generalizes a result of Bergemann and Pesendorfer [D. Bergemann, M. Pesendorfer, Information structures in optimal auctions, J. Econ. Theory 137 (2007) 580-609], who show that revenue-maximizing information structures are asymmetric. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.