The public release of information in first-price sealed-bid auctions

We determine the conditions under which the seller in a first-price sealed-bid auction has an incentive to reveal his private information about the mean of bidders’ valuations in order to increase his expected revenue. With risk-neutral bidders, we show that the seller’s expected revenue is higher when information is revealed. However, when bidders are risk-averse, this result does not necessarily hold; it depends on the bidders’ risk-aversion level and on the number of bidders.