Ranking reversals in asymmetric auctions

This paper compares the first-price auction and the second-price auction with several asymmetric bidders who are either weak or strong. The ranking of these auctions in terms of profit may flip as the exogenous reserve price or the number of weak or strong bidders change. Similarly, with endogenous reserve prices the ranking may depend on the seller’s own-use valuation. In other words, the ranking may be fragile to changes along these dimensions. Existing models rule out such ranking reversals by imposing substantial structure on type distributions. The current paper relies on simple mechanism design arguments that require less structure.     

On the Sub-optimality of Entry Fees in Auctions With Entry

We study a variation of Myerson’s (1981) model in which we allow for uncertainty about the number of bidders. In our set-up, an appropriate reserve price in a standard auction maximizes the auctioneer’s expected revenue. However, entry fees can be optimal only under some special conditions. Basically, there must be some homogeneity in bidders’ beliefs about the number of bidders and the auctioneer must know, to some extent, these beliefs.     

Optimal auctions with multidimensional types and the desirability of exclusion

Within the context of a single-unit, independent private values auction model, we show that if bidder types are multidimensional, then under the optimal auction exclusion of a positive measure of bidder types occur. The results complements Armstrong’s (1996) exclusion of types result.     

Spatial discrimination: Bertrand vs. Cournot with asymmetric demands

This paper develops a barbell model a la Hwang and Mai [Hwang, H., and C.C. Mai, 1990, Effects of spatial price discrimination on output, welfare, and location, American Economic Review 80, 567–575.] with homogeneous product and asymmetric demands to compare prices, aggregate profits and social welfare between Cournot and Bertrand competition, and to analyze the firms' equilibrium locations. It focuses on the impacts of the spatial barrier generated from transport costs, and the market size effect resulting from asymmetric demands. It shows that the market-size effect is crucial in determining firms' locations under Cournot competition, but insignificant under Bertrand competition. Moreover, the equilibrium price of the large market and the aggregate profits are lower but the social welfare is higher under Cournot competition than under Bertrand competition if one of the markets is sufficiently large and the transport cost is high.     

Optimal procurement mechanisms for divisible goods with capacitated suppliers

Procurement auction literature typically assumes that the suppliers are uncapacitated [see, e.g. Dasgupta and Spulber in Inf Econ Policy 4:5–29, 1990 and Che in Rand J Econ 24(4):668–680, 1993]. Consequently, the auction mechanisms award the contract to a single supplier. We study mechanism design in a model where suppliers have limited production capacity, and both the marginal costs and the production capacities are private information. We provide a closed-form solution for the revenue maximizing direct mechanism when the distribution of the cost and production capacities satisfies a modified regularity condition [Myerson in Math Oper Res 6(1):58–73, 1981]. We also present a sealed low bid implementation of the optimal direct mechanism for the special case of identical suppliers. The results in this paper extend to other principle-agent mechanism design problems where the agents have a privately known upper bound on allocation. The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees for valuable suggestions and comments.     

The unanimity rule and extremely asymmetric committees

This paper analyzes how to allocate experts into committees that use the unanimity rule to make decisions. We show that an optimal allocation of experts is extremely asymmetric. To reach the optimal allocation, therefore, one needs only to rank the experts in terms of their abilities and then allocate adjacent experts such that an expert’s ability tends to vary inversely with the size of his committee. In the special case of three-member committees, we show that the optimal allocation maximizes the sum of the products of the experts’ skills in each committee.     

Robust efficiency in mixed economies with asymmetric information

In this paper, we study robustly efficient allocations in a pure exchange economy. Answering a question of Hervés-Beloso and Moreno-García (2008), we present an extension of their main result to an asymmetric information mixed economy whose commodity space is an ordered separable Banach space having an interior point in its positive cone.     

Rational expectations equilibria and the ex-post core of an economy with asymmetric information

We study the relationship between the set of rational expectations equilibrium allocations and the ex-post core of exchange economies with asymmetric information.     

Information provision and consumer search behavior for products with asymmetric uncertainty

When selling multiple products with asymmetric uncertainty, should the seller disclose product information so that customers do not have to incur any cost to resolve their uncertainties; if so, which product should the seller choose? To address these questions, we consider a monopolist selling two substitutable products to a group of consumers. Each consumer has asymmetric uncertainty regarding the two products. A total of four different information provision structures are considered based on whether the seller discloses information about each product with the aim of determining which strategy provides the seller with the greatest revenue. We derive several interesting results. First, the optimal information provision strategy depends on the magnitude of uncertainty in relation to the product with lower uncertainty. Specifically, if the uncertainty regarding the product with lower uncertainty is sufficiently small, it is optimal for the seller to provide information about the product with higher uncertainty, otherwise, the seller should provide information about both products. Second, when only one product's information should be revealed, it is optimal for the seller to choose the product with higher uncertainty and charge a higher price. Third, withholding information on both products is never optimal for the seller. Finally, our main model is extended by examining the Mean-Preserving Spread setting, and the robustness of our main results is confirmed. Furthermore, we examine the situation in which a monopolist sells a single product with two main attributes. We find that each of the four information provision strategies can be optimal under various scenarios.     

The Buyer's Option in Multi-Unit Ascending Auctions: The Case of Wine Auctions at Drouot

This paper studies multi-unit ascending (English) auctions with a buyer's option. The buyer's option gives the winner of an auction the right to purchase any number of units at the winning price. We develop a theoretical model and derive the optimal strategies for the bidders. The model predicts various behavioral implications (e.g., the winner never exercises the option, the price declines…) that are tested using a unique data set on wine auctions held at the Paris-based auction house Drouot. We also analyze why the buyer's option is used. Estimating the model in a structural econometric way, and using counterfactual comparisons, we find that the buyer's option does not affect the seller's revenue (relative to a system where the units are auctioned sequentially without the option). Drouot, however, saves a lot of time with the option and this effect represents a considerable amount of money. The time-saving effect seems thus to be the primary purpose of the buyer's option.     

Blocking efficiency in an economy with asymmetric information

In this paper, we study a pure exchange atomless economy with asymmetric information and having an ordered Banach space with an interior point in its positive cone as the commodity space. An extension of the main theorem in Vind (1972) to the private core without free disposal is established. As a particular case of this result, a solution to a problem mentioned in Pesce (2010) is derived.     

Inflation and output volatility under asymmetric incomplete information

The assumption of asymmetric and incomplete information in a standard New Keynesian model creates strong incentives for monetary policy transparency. We assume that the central bank has better information about its objectives than the private sector, and that the private sector has better information about shocks than the central bank. Transparency has the potential to trigger a virtuous circle in which all agents find it easier to make inferences and the economy is better stabilised. Our analysis improves upon existing work by endogenising the volatility of both output and inflation. Improved transparency most likely manifests itself in falling output volatility.     

Takings of development rights with asymmetric information and an endogenous probability of an externality

A game-theoretic model is used to analyze the interaction between the landowner and the government. In the benchmark model, efficiency can be reached when compensation is tied to the private value of developed land, which is contrary to much of the takings literature. Further, the level of compensation needed to create an efficient outcome with no over-development is derived. Next, two cases are considered: asymmetric information and an endogenous probability of an externality. First, the presence of the positive externality is revealed only to the landowner before the decision to develop early. In this case, if the landowner does not receive the full market compensation, then he or she has an incentive to eliminate the externality. In the second case, the model includes an endogenous probability of a positive externality occurring that depends on investment in conservation. For an efficient outcome to occur, the landowner should be compensated by the full amount of the positive externality. This compensation scheme aligns the incentives of the owner with society.     

Strategic real options under asymmetric information

This paper studies the effect of private information on the capital allocation decisions of firms who operate under imperfect competition. I analyze two interactive firms, one with private information and the other without, who must decide when to undertake an irreversible and uncertain investment decision. Traditional non-strategic models of irreversible investment under uncertainty involve a single decision maker and result in an optimal period of delay before the investment is undertaken. In a strategic setting, firms must balance their desire to delay against competitive advantages from early investment. I find that an equilibrium may not exist within the standard continuous framework when the private information is over revenues. Moreover, when an equilibrium does exist the competitive pressures from the uninformed firm are weak. This is in contrast to existing models with asymmetric information over costs, where an equilibrium always exists and the competitive pressures remain strong (Hsu and Lambrecht, 2007). This work shows that the investment timing decision, and thus the value of the private information, is highly sensitive to the nature of incomplete information.     

Arbitrage and price revelation with asymmetric information and incomplete markets

This paper deals with the issue of arbitrage with differential information and incomplete financial markets, with a focus on information that no-arbitrage asset prices can reveal. Time and uncertainty are represented by two periods and a finite set S of states of nature, one of which will prevail at the second period. Agents may operate limited financial transfers across periods and states via finitely many nominal assets. Each agent i has a private information about which state will prevail at the second period; this information is represented by a subset S_i of S. Agents receive no wrong information in the sense that the “true state” belongs to the “pooled information” set ∩_iS_i, hence assumed to be non-empty.Our analysis is two-fold. We first extend the classical symmetric information analysis to the asymmetric setting, via a concept of no-arbitrage price. Second, we study how such no-arbitrage prices convey information to agents in a decentralized way. The main difference between the symmetric and the asymmetric settings stems from the fact that a classical no-arbitrage asset price (common to every agent) always exists in the first case, but no longer in the asymmetric one, thus allowing arbitrage opportunities. This is the main reason why agents may need to refine their information up to an information structure which precludes arbitrage.     

A note on the equilibrium theory of economies with asymmetric information

In this note, we give an equilibrium existence theorem for exchange economies with asymmetric information and with an infinite dimensional commodity space. In our model, we assume that preferences are represented by well behaved utility functions, the positive cone has a non empty interior and the individual rational utility set is compact. Our result complements the corresponding one in Podczeck and Yannelis (2008), in the sense that is applicable to commodity spaces in which the order intervals are (possibly) not compact with respect to any Hausdorff linear topology.     

Identification of first-price auctions with non-separable unobserved heterogeneity

We propose a novel methodology for identification of first-price auctions, when bidders’ private valuations are independent conditional on one-dimensional unobserved heterogeneity. We extend the existing literature ( and ) by allowing the unobserved heterogeneity to be non-separable from bidders’ valuations. Our central identifying assumption is that the distribution of bidder values is increasing in the state. When the state-space is finite, such monotonicity implies the full-rank condition needed for identification. Further, we extend our approach to the conditionally independent private values model of Li et al. (2000), as well as to unobserved heterogeneity settings in which the implicit reserve price or the cost of bidding varies across auctions.     

Panel cointegration,quantile regressions,asymmetric adjustments and crises: The case of EU current accounts

This paper investigates the relationships between the current account and several fundamentals, including the real exchange rate, government consumption, investment, openness, terms of trade and real income in the EU28 group of countries. A main feature of the study is that we also assess the relationships for two subgroups, the EU15 + Cyprus and Malta, and the CEECs. Using data spanning the period between 1995q1 and 2019q2, we identify similarities and differences between the responses in these two subgroups, which are obscured when an aggregate study of the EU28 is conducted, rather than sub-groups. Our results suggest that, in assessing the current account for economic blocs, an a priori assumption of similar relationships for member countries may be misplaced.     

信息不对称下保险信用缺失分析及防范

当前，保险信用缺失已成为制约保险市场进一步发展的瓶颈。文中从投保人、保险人的逆向选择及道德风险三个方面阐述了保险信用缺失的原因，同时提出了健全我国保险信用体系的对策。     

Predicting default risk under asymmetric binary link functions

In this article we propose the use of an asymmetric binary link function to extend the proportional hazard model for predicting loan default. The rationale behind this approach is that the symmetry assumption that has been widely used in the literature could be considered as quite restrictive, especially during periods of financial distress. In our approach we allow for a flexible level of asymmetry in the probability of default by the use of the skewed logit distribution. This enable us to estimate the actual level of asymmetry that is associated with the data at hand. We implement our approach to both simulated data and a rich micro dataset of consumer loan accounts. Our results provide clear evidence that ignoring the actual level of asymmetry leads to seriously biased estimates of the slope coefficients, inaccurate marginal effects of the covariates of the model, and overestimation of the probability of default. Regarding the predictive power of the covariates of the model, we have found that loan-specific covariates contain considerably more information about the loan default than macroeconomic covariates, which are often used in practice to carry out macroprudential stress testing.