(SUB-)OPTIMAL ENTRY FEES

Ángel Hernando Veciana ()
Additional contact information
Ángel Hernando Veciana: Universidad de Alicante
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Angel Hernando-Veciana ()

Working Papers. Serie AD from Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie)

Abstract: We extend Myerson's (1981) model by allowing for uncertainty about the number of bidders. In such extension the Revenue Equivalence Theorem still holds and the optimal allocation rule remains the same. Hence, the optimal auction can be implemented with an appropriate reserve price. Nonetheless, we show that entry fees are sub-optimal. The reasons are heterogeneity in bidders' beliefs about the number of bidders, and auctioneer's uncertainty about the optimum entry fee, if any. Our result implies a reversal of the revenue ranking by Milgrom and Weber (1982) which is consistent with many real life situations: auction houses, internet auctions,...

Keywords: Optimal Auction; Random Number of Bidders; Reserve Price; Entry Fee. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2002-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published by Ivie

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ivie.es/downloads/docs/wpasad/wpasad-2002-03.pdf Fisrt version / Primera version, 2002 (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:ivi:wpasad:2002-03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers. Serie AD from Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Departamento de Edición ().