American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Auctions, Actions, and the Failure of Information Aggregation
American Economic Review
vol. 104,
no. 7, July 2014
(pp. 2014–48)
Abstract
We study a uniform-price auction where k identical common-value objects are allocated amongst z > k bidders who have imperfect signals about the state of the world. The common valuation is determined jointly by the state and an action that is chosen after winning an object. In large auctions, there are symmetric equilibria where the auction price aggregates no information. Moreover, market statistics other than price (e.g., the amount of rationing or the bid distribution) contain extra information about the state. In contrast, in standard large auctions without actions, the price aggregates all relevant information.Citation
Atakan, Alp E., and Mehmet Ekmekci. 2014. "Auctions, Actions, and the Failure of Information Aggregation." American Economic Review, 104 (7): 2014–48. DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.7.2014Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D44 Auctions
- D82 Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief