Pre-Auction Offers in Asymmetric First-Price and Second-Price Auctions

Rene Kirkegaard and Per Overgaard ()

No 2005-04, CIE Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Industrial Economics

Abstract: We consider “must-sell” auctions with asymmetric buyers. First, we study auctions with two asymmetric buyers, where the distribution of valuations of the strong buyer is “stretched” relative to that of the weak buyer. Then, it is known that inefficient first-price auctions are more profitable for the seller than efficient second-price auctions. This is because the former favor the weak buyer. However, we show that the seller can do one better by augmenting the first-price auction by a pre-auction offer made exclusively to the strong buyer. Should the strong buyer reject the offer, the object is simply sold in an ordinary first-price auction. The result is driven by the fact that the unmodified first-price auction is too favorable to the weak buyer, and that the pre-auction offer allows some correction of this to the benefit of the seller. Secondly, we show quite generally that pre-auction offers never increase the profitability of second-price auctions, since they introduce the wrong kind of favoritism from the perspective of seller profits.

Keywords: first-price and second-price auctions; asymmetric bidders; pre-auction offers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D44 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2005-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.ku.dk/cie/dp/dp_2003-2006/2005-04.pdf/ (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.econ.ku.dk/cie/dp/dp_2003-2006/2005-04.pdf/ [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.econ.ku.dk/cie/dp/dp_2003-2006/2005-04.pdf/)

Related works:
Journal Article: Pre-auction offers in asymmetric first-price and second-price auctions (2008)
Working Paper: Pre-Auction Offers in Asymmetric First-Price and Second-Price Auctions (2005)
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:kud:kuieci:2005-04

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CIE Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Industrial Economics �ster Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Hoffmann ().