Peaches, lemons, and cookies: Designing auction markets with dispersed information

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Abraham, Ittai; Athey, Susan; Babaioff, Moshe; Grubb, Michael D.
• 署名单位: VMware, Inc.; Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Boston College
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2020.09.004
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 454-477
• 关键词: Market design; auction; Common value; asymmetry; Online advertising

摘要

We study how ex ante information asymmetries affect revenue in common-value second price auctions, motivated by online advertising auctions where cookies inform individual advertisers about advertising opportunities. We distinguish information structures in which cookies identify lemons (low-value impressions) from those in which cookies identify peaches (high-value impressions). As this setting features multiple Nash equilibria, we introduce a new refinement, tremble robust equilibrium (TRE) and characterize the unique TRE in first-price and second-price common-value auctions with two bidders who each receive a binary signal. We find that common-value second-price auction revenues are vulnerable to ex ante information asymmetry if relatively rare cookies identify lemons, but not if they identify peaches. First-price auction revenues are substantially higher than second-price auction revenues under these conditions. Extensions show that these insights are robust. (c) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.