Talk:Auction theory

Empirical results
I'm looking for organizational opinion. This article is "Auction theory". Let's assume it gets fleshed out with the theory. Then, there's still a lot of supporting and contrary evidence--mostly from experiments, and also from observation of RL auctions. So, do those empirical results belong in a theory article? I think they do until/unless the article gets too big. Other thoughts?Cretog8 (talk) 17:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd encourage you to go for it. Debate   木  07:21, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Dr. Graddy's comment on this article
Dr. Graddy has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"This is really quite good and thorough."

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Dr. Graddy has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Kathryn Graddy & Jonathan Hamilton, 2014. "Auction House Guarantees for Works of Art," ACEI Working Paper Series AWP-02-2014, Association for Cultural Economics International, revised May 2014.

ExpertIdeas (talk) 19:29, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Salmon's comment on this article
Dr. Salmon has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"The General Idea section is incorrect. Auctions define a set of rules that define how bids are submitted, how objects are allocated and how payments are determined. The outcome absolutely can depend on the identity of the bidders. There are auctions where each bidder might have a different bidding credit assigned to them. Auctions can involve composite bids in which the reputation score of the bidder is included in with the price bid. I also have no idea what they universal criteria is. I've also never seen the terms standard versus non-standard auctions. It's a meaningless distinction. For the types of auction section, I wouldn't say that those four auction types revolve around those. Those are the standard simple forms most things start with but there is nothing special about them. Also, this section refers to those 4 as standard indicating the next ones are not standard. This violates the odd notion of standard and non-standard from the previous section. Wow is the game theoretic model section just oddly written. The first paragraph is just oddly constructed. The second paragraph is incorrect. Common and private value assumptions are the extreme endpoints of a continuum. In the middle there are affiliated values structures. The definition of common values is also imprecise and not in my view correct. The statement of the Revenue Equivalence theorem is incomplete. There are conditions missing. The linkage principle has nothing to do with the Winner's Curse. The WC is also explained imprecisely."

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Dr. Salmon has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference 1: Radosveta Ivanova-Stenzel & Timothy Salmon, 2009. "The High/Low Divide: Self-Selection by Values in Auction Choice," Working Papers wp2009_06_02, Department of Economics, Florida State University.


 * Reference 2: Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta & Salmon, Timothy C., 2006. "Anomalies in Auction Choice Behavior," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 174, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 15:45, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Schmutzler's comment on this article
Dr. Schmutzler has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"1. "Vickrey showed that in the sealed first-price auction it is an equilibrium bidding strategy for each bidder to bid half his valuation."

Comment: This is for n=2 Players

2. Moreover, it would be desirable to mention something like.

"A practically important variant of an auction is a procurement auctions through which a public or private buyer purchases goods or services"

Reference: Handbook of Procurement (Editors: Nicola Dimitri, Gustavo Piga,    Giancarlo Spagnolo)"

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We believe Dr. Schmutzler has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Stefan Jonsson & Armin Schmutzler, 2013. "All-pay auctions: Implementation and optimality," ECON - Working Papers 108, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 19:57, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Moldovanu's comment on this article
Dr. Moldovanu has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"The article is more or less ok on single object auctions, but completely neglects multi- object auctions, the main focus of both theoretical interest and major applications . It needs a serious write up. Moreover, the references to research articles is a bit strange ( major papers are not cited, some more obscure one are cited)"

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We believe Dr. Moldovanu has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference 1: Jehiel, Philippe & Meyer-Ter-Vehn, Moritz & Moldovanu, Benny, 2006. "Mixed Bundling Auctions," CEPR Discussion Papers 5566, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.


 * Reference 2: Jehiel, Philippe & Moldovanu, Benny, 2006. "Allocative and Informational Externalities in Auctions and Related Mechanisms," CEPR Discussion Papers 5558, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 15:56, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Kirchkamp's comment on this article
Dr. Kirchkamp has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"“...typical issues studied by auction theorists include the efficiency of a given auction design, optimal and equilibrium bidding strategies, and revenue comparison...” → “ “...typical issues studied by auction theorists include revenue obtained by the different participants of the auction, the overall efficiency of different auction formats, as well as optimal and equilibrium bidding strategies.”

“They may be used to sell ... ” → “They may be used to sell or buy ...”

“The outcome of the auction does not depend on the identity of the bidders; i.e., auctions are anonymous.” → I would drop this part since in my view this restriction is often not satisfied (prominent example includes spectrum auctions).

In English auction the article mentions: “Sometimes the lot is only actually sold if the bidding reaches a reserve price...” → Reserve prices could apply to any auction format. I suggest to present the idea of “reserve prices” after the four traditional auction have been explained.

“Each bid function maps the player's value (in the case of a buyer) or cost (in the case of a seller) to a bid price.” → “Bid functions map the information available to the player, such as own values or cost, behaviour of other bidders, etc., to own behaviour (e.g. bids) in the auction”.

“...and a payoff vector corresponding to each combination of strategies.” → “...and a function which maps behaviour of all participants of the auction into an outcome of the auction and into payments. Given the value and cost of buyers and sellers outcome and payments then translate into payoffs for the participants.

“The payoff of each player under a combination of strategies...” → “Since for each player there is uncertainty about the other players, during the auction it is not certain which strategy leads to which outcome. One way to deal with this uncertainty is to assume that players maximise expected utility.

“Game-theoretic models of auctions and strategic bidding generally fall into either of the following two categories. In a private value model,...” → “Game-theoretic models of auctions make different assumptions about what participants know about their own valuation and cost and what they can potentially learn from other participants of the auction. In the simplest case, the private value auction, each participant has some information which is the only determinant of the own valuation. In other words: Each participant know the the own valuation or cost with certainty. Whatver the other bidders do during the auction does not affect the own valuation.

A more general case is the case of common values where the own valuation includes, for each participant, not only the own information but also information only available to other participants. A typical example could be a good whose exact value is not known, where all participants have obtained some approximate information, and where the best approximation of the true value is some average of the expectation of all participants. Some auction formats, like the English auction, allow to reveal some information during the bidding process. Sealed bid auctions can not reveal information during the bidding process.

Section “Ex-post equilibrium in a simple auction market” → This title does not seem to match what follows (which is a discussion of values which follow a symmetric distribution). I suggest to have first a discussion of optimality of bidding functions ex ante, ex interim and ex post. Thereafter one could have another section on symmetric distribution of bids.

“The first formal analysis of auctions was by William Vickrey (1961)...” → This part should perhaps be an extra subsection on “Deriving equilibrium bids - the English auction with uniformly distributed values.” This section could at the end (before Revenue equivalence is discussed) refer to the idea that the Revenue equivalence principle is also a possibility to find equilibrium strategies.

“The revenue equivalence theorem states...” → This part seems to aim at a replication of the Wikipedia article on the Revenue Equivalence Theorem. Perhaps it might be better just to refer to this article."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Kirchkamp has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Oliver Kirchkamp & J. Philipp Rei, 2008. "Heterogeneous bids in auctions with rational and markdown bidders - Theory and Experiment," Jena Economic Research Papers 2008-066, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Max-Planck-Institute of Economics.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 16:06, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

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Assessment of Article
This article's grade should be changed from "start" to "C". The article is relatively substantial in content with numerous major sources cited. This includes foundational early works into auction theory such as Vickrey's 1961 paper, as well as critical modern contributions from Milgrom and Weber, Riley and Samuelson, and Wilson. This makes a "start" grade inappropriate, as the article is no longer "quite incomplete" in content. However, any grade above "C" is also inappropriate as the article still requires considerable improvements and clean-up. For example, multi-unit auctions are not sufficiently discussed. With two pivotal events occurring in the 1990's (Salomon Brothers scandal in 1991 and the advent of the Federal Communications Comission spectrum auctions in 1994), multi-unit auctions has come to the foreground in auction theory over single-item auctions. There's no mention of pay-as-bid auctions nor any of the recent key works from Holmberg (2008) and Restek, Weretka and Pycia (2009). Consequently, this article should be assessed at a "C" grade. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin.yu1997 (talk • contribs) 02:44, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

PLEASE help clean up this article
So I was reading this article and I noticed a grammatical error. No big deal, I fixed it. But then I noticed more errors, and realized that the whole section was full of stuff like that. So, naturally, I cleaned it up as best I could. But THEN I noticed stuff like that across the ENTIRE article. I fixed some of it but it still needs MASSIVE copy editing. ANYONE who can help, please do! I'll be working to fix as many problems as I can but I can't do it all right now, so I'd appreciate any help here. TypoEater (talk) 14:36, 4 April 2024 (UTC)


 * UPDATE: I just posted this article to the Guild of Copy Editors request page. TypoEater (talk) 14:51, 4 April 2024 (UTC)