Auctions (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series) by Timothy P. Hubbard, Harry J. Paarsch - prezzominimo convenienzadelbluff ricchezzadeibidder farpagareiperdenti iltrasportodelloggetto astafilantropica fargirareilsecchiello
The neutrality of the revenue equivalence theorem induces ambivalence; the seller’s choice seems unimportant.Read more at location 872
When one of the assumptions is relaxed, it matters which type of auction is used.Read more at location 874
the highest bid must exceed the minimum acceptable price, otherwise the object goes unsold. At many auctions, sellers impose reserve prices. Why?Read more at location 892
reserve price must be set before the auction begins and its existence must be made known to all participating at the auction.Read more at location 893
For example, outside Dallas, Texas, the Vetro Glassblowing Studio & Gallery hosts its “Truth or Consequences Auction” each fall.Read more at location 895
the artist specifies a minimum acceptable price for the glass piece on sale.Read more at location 897
If the reserve price is not met, then a rope securing the top piece is released allowing the metal to destroy the artwork.Read more at location 899
at a second-price auction, the reserve price can be particularly effective as an insurance device, especially when the seller may receive one high, acceptable bid, but many other low bids.Read more at location 907
In 1990 the New Zealand government sold the rights to use electromagnetic spectrum for radio and television as well as mobile phones at auction, but reserve prices were not imposed. To allocate the licenses, the government opted to use the Vickrey auction. Unfortunately, for the government (the seller), unusually low revenues were garnered.Read more at location 910
Some licenses received just one bid; in the absence of a reserve price, those bidders got the licenses for free!Read more at location 914
Clearly, however, a trade-off exists: setting too high a reserve price increases the odds that the object goes unsold but potentially increases the revenues a seller earns when the object is sold.Read more at location 916
Perhaps surprising to the reader, the optimal reserve price exceeds the seller’s own valuation for the object.Read more at location 920
those having valuations above $50 behave more aggressively because the valuations of rivals who participate are now known to exceed the reserve price. That is, rivals who participate are a self-selected group of bidders having higher-than-average valuations.Read more at location 929
From an economist’s perspective, the downside of using reserve prices is that the auctions are no longer efficient:Read more at location 937
the object goes unsold, which is clearly an inefficient outcome.Read more at location 938
With a secret reserve price, the bidders understand that a minimum acceptable bid exists, but they are not told its specific value. Christie’s and Sotheby’s are well known to use secret reserve prices.Read more at location 944
At first-price auctions, in the baseline model, no incentive exists for the seller to keep the reserve price hidden as the seller can always do at least as well by publicizing the threshold price as opposed to keeping it hidden.Read more at location 950
In some sense, this is like another player is at auction. Still, such a policy does not generate the needed increase in aggressiveness from bidders to outperform an optimally set,Read more at location 954
Above, we focused on the symmetric IPV paradigm. The word symmetric implies that bidders’ valuations are drawn from the same urn, a potentially restrictive assumption. If valuations are drawn from different urns, then the model is referred to as asymmetric.Read more at location 967
Asymmetries can arise for any number of reasons. For example, if bidders have different budget constraints,Read more at location 968
A bidder from Vermont at an auction of an antique tractor in rural New Hampshire faces different costs for transporting the machine back to his property than a farmer from Wisconsin.Read more at location 970
When bidders’ valuations are drawn from different urns, such differences can change the way bidders behave at auctions. At second-price auctions, however, nothing changes—itRead more at location 975
Another fundamental change would involve having losing bidders pay, too.Read more at location 1064
In practice, many auctions require payment from all bidders who participate.Read more at location 1065
The auction ends at a prespecified time or if during some period no bidders have paid the bid fee to increase the price,Read more at location 1073
relative to the first-price auction in the baseline model, bidders will choose to shade their bids by even more at all-pay auctions because payment is required regardless of the outcome. Consequently, as you can see, iPads can sometimes be won online for $40.Read more at location 1090
All-pay auctions are also a valuable way of selling an object when bidders are interested in the amount of money generated at auction, which is often true for supporters of a charity.Read more at location 1093
Researchers at Middlebury College conducted auctions both in experimental settings and at real-world fundraising auctions conducted by schools in Vermont and Oregon as well as various Rotary International service clubs throughout the United States. The researchers found that all-pay auctions generate more revenues for charities than winner-pay auctions.Read more at location 1102
evidence for charities to raise money by using what they refer to as a bucket auction. The bucket auction works as follows: one randomly selected bidder in the room is given the opportunity to put a nonrefundable chip (which has a fixed monetary value) into a bucket. The bucket is then passed to another bidder in the room who decides whether to place a chip into the bucket. The bucket continues circulating aroundRead more at location 1105
The bidder who drops the last chip in the bucket is declared the winner.Read more at location 1110
Another reason for discussing the all-pay auction is that it illustrates how other situations in the real world can be modeled as auctions, even though they obviously are not.Read more at location 1116
Differences in bidders’ signals generate differences in the bids tendered at auction.Read more at location 1139
linkage principle. The linkage principle states that a seller can expect to increase revenues by providing information to bidders. The linkage principle is the second most famous result in auction theory.Read more at location 1190
That is why, for example, the English auction does better for the seller than the Vickrey auction in this setting: bidders can learn about others’ private information as the auction is conducted.Read more at location 1193
For example, government agencies often provide engineers’ estimates to firms who bid on the right to perform some task. Christie’s and Sotheby’s list professional estimates of a painting’s value in their auction catalogs
