Optimal Discrimination-Free Auctions

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Chen, Bo; Knyazev, Dmitriy
• 署名单位: Shenzhen University; University of Vienna
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2024.04584
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: discrimination; mechanism design; Optimal auction; reserve price

摘要

This paper introduces a second-price auction with a flexible reserve price, where the reserve price for the top bidder is not fixed but rather determined as a function of all losing bids. We show that when bidders are ex ante heterogeneous, a second-price auction with an optimally chosen flexible reserve price not only generates strictly higher expected revenue than that of a second-price auction with any fixed reserve price but is also revenue-maximizing among all mechanisms that implement discrimination-free social choice functions. We also provide an axiomatic characterization of all second-price auctions with a flexible reserve price. Finally, we discuss real-life implementation.