Equitable Pricing in Auctions (joint with Patrick Loiseau, Simon Mauras, Mathieu Molina, and Bary Pradelski)
How does auction design affect the division of surplus among buyers? We propose a parsimonious measure for equity and apply it to multi-unit auctions, in which unit demand buyers with private-common values pay mixtures of uniform and pay-as-bid pricing. We show that uniform pricing is equity-optimal if and only if buyers have a pure common value. Surprisingly, however, with pure private values, pay-as-bid pricing may not be optimal, and uniform pricing can achieve higher surplus equity. For the class of log-concave signal distributions, we provide prior-free bounds on the equity-optimal pricing rule.
Date: 5 November 2024, 12:45
Venue: Nuffield College, New Road OX1 1NF
Venue Details: Butler Room or https://zoom.us/j/92241183272?pwd=NzBhTVg1d1g5Sm1NRnQ4cU1iS1NmZz09
Speaker: Simon Finster (University of Oxford)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Part of: Economic Theory Workshop
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Edward Clark