sis 16(11): e5

Research Article

The Optimal Sequence of Prices and Auctions

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  • @ARTICLE{10.4108/eai.8-8-2015.2260557,
    author={Hanzhe Zhang},
    title={The Optimal Sequence of Prices and Auctions},
    journal={EAI Endorsed Transactions on Scalable Information Systems},
    volume={3},
    number={11},
    publisher={ACM},
    journal_a={SIS},
    year={2015},
    month={8},
    keywords={dynamic mechanism design, auction versus price, buy-it-now},
    doi={10.4108/eai.8-8-2015.2260557}
}
  • Hanzhe Zhang
    Year: 2015
    The Optimal Sequence of Prices and Auctions
    SIS
    EAI
    DOI: 10.4108/eai.8-8-2015.2260557
Hanzhe Zhang1,*
  • 1: Department of Economics, University of Chicago
*Contact email: hanzhe@uchicago.edu

Abstract

Consider a monopolist seller who must use posted prices and reserve price auctions to sell one unit of an indivisible good while buyers with independent private values arrive over time. Assume an auction costs more to the seller or to the buyers than a posted price. For a wide range of auction cost, the optimal mechanism sequence is a sequence of prices followed by a sequence of auctions. The prices-then-auctions sequence is optimal under various extensions of the basic setting and resembles a buy-it-now selling format on eBay.

Keywords
dynamic mechanism design, auction versus price, buy-it-now
Published
2015-08-13
Publisher
ACM
http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/eai.8-8-2015.2260557

Copyright © 2015 H. Zhang, licensed to EAI. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unlimited use, distribution and reproduction in any medium so long as the original work is properly cited.