American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Selling to Advised Buyers
American Economic Review
vol. 109,
no. 4, April 2019
(pp. 1323–48)
Abstract
In many cases, buyers are not informed about their valuations and rely on experts, who are informed but biased for overbidding. We study auction design when selling to such "advised buyers." We show that a canonical dynamic auction, the English auction, has a natural equilibrium that outperforms standard static auctions in expected revenues and allocative efficiency. The ability to communicate as the auction proceeds allows for more informative communication and gives advisors the ability to persuade buyers into overbidding. The same outcome is the unique equilibrium of the English auction when bidders can commit to contracts with their advisors.Citation
Malenko, Andrey, and Anton Tsoy. 2019. "Selling to Advised Buyers." American Economic Review, 109 (4): 1323–48. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20170334Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D44 Auctions
- D82 Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
- D86 Economics of Contract: Theory