Merging Auction Houses

Jesse Schwartz and Ricardo Ungo
Additional contact information
Jesse Schwartz: Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University
Ricardo Ungo: Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University

No 303, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers from Vanderbilt University Department of Economics

Abstract: In this paper, we study the incentives for market concentration of (online and traditional) auction houses. Would sellers and buyers be better off if two separate auction houses merged? We suppose that each auction house has a separate clientele of sellers and buyers. Sellers value their (identical) units at 0, while buyers have independent private values. Each auction house uses an ascending auction or by revenue equivalence any auction mechanism that allocates units efficiently among those buyers at that auction house. If no buyers are lost upon the merger, we find that efficiency gains increase, but that the expected sellers' revenue increases by more than the efficiency gains, leaving the buyers worse off. This result extends Bulow and Klemperer's (1996) insight that the competition of an additional bidder increases auction revenue by more than the ability to commit to an optimal auction with one less bidder; in our model, the extra competition created by having all of the bidders bid against each other after the merger more than offsets any supply effects. With an example, we show that if buyers choose whether to participate or not, it is possible upon a merger that so many buyers are lost, the sellers are actually worse off. We conclude that without transfers from sellers to buyers, the merger may or may not be profitable for sellers.

Keywords: Auctions; mergers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/VUECON/vu03-w03.pdf First version, 2003 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:van:wpaper:0303

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers from Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John P. Conley ().