Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/econwp/153.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An externality-robust auction: theory and experimental evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Björn Bartling
  • Nick Netzer
Abstract
Behavioral robustness is essential in mechanism design. Existing papers focus on robustness as captured by dominant strategies. This paper studies the novel concept of externality-robustness, which addresses players’ motives to affect other players’ monetary payoffs. One example is externalities due to spite, which has been used to explain overbidding in second-price auctions. We show theoretically and experimentally that a trade-off exists between dominant-strategy implementation and externality-robust implementation. In particular, we derive the externality-robust counterpart of the second-price auction. Our experiments replicate the earlier finding of overbidding in the second-price auction, but we find that average bids equal value in the externality-robust auction. Our data also reveal that both auctions produce the same level of efficiency, suggesting that both dimensions of robustness are equally important. Our results are relevant for mechanism design in general, because the concept of externality-robustness is applicable to arbitrary mechanism design problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Björn Bartling & Nick Netzer, 2013. "An externality-robust auction: theory and experimental evidence," ECON - Working Papers 153, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Apr 2016.
    • Handle: RePEc:zur:econwp:153
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/95369/14/econwp153.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Segal, Uzi & Sobel, Joel, 2007. "Tit for tat: Foundations of preferences for reciprocity in strategic settings," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 197-216, September.
    2. Singh, Rajdeep, 1998. "Takeover Bidding with Toeholds: The Case of the Owner's Curse," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(4), pages 679-704.
    3. Burkart, Mike, 1995. "Initial Shareholdings and Overbidding in Takeover Contests," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1491-1515, December.
    4. , & , & ,, 2006. "Optimal auctions with ambiguity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(4), pages 411-438, December.
    5. Jeremy Bulow & Ming Huang & Paul Klemperer, 1999. "Toeholds and Takeovers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 427-454, June.
    6. Jehiel, Philippe & Moldovanu, Benny & Stacchetti, Ennio, 1996. "How (Not) to Sell Nuclear Weapons," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 814-829, September.
    7. David Ettinger, 2008. "Auctions and Shareholdings," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 90, pages 233-257.
    8. Geoffroy de Clippel, 2014. "Behavioral Implementation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 2975-3002, October.
    9. Sheremeta, Roman M., 2010. "Experimental comparison of multi-stage and one-stage contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 731-747, March.
    10. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2012. "Robust Mechanism Design," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 2, pages 49-96, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    11. Tilman Börgers & Peter Norman, 2009. "A note on budget balance under interim participation constraints: the case of independent types," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 39(3), pages 477-489, June.
    12. Kfir Eliaz, 2002. "Fault Tolerant Implementation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(3), pages 589-610.
    13. Dufwenberg, Martin & Kirchsteiger, Georg, 2004. "A theory of sequential reciprocity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 268-298, May.
    14. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    15. Antonio Cabrales & Roberto Serrano, 2007. "Implemetation in Adaptive Better-Response Dynamics," Working Papers wp2007_0708, CEMFI.
    16. Matthews, Steven A., 1983. "Selling to risk averse buyers with unobservable tastes," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 370-400, August.
    17. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    18. Kagel, John H & Levin, Dan, 1993. "Independent Private Value Auctions: Bidder Behaviour in First-, Second- and Third-Price Auctions with Varying Numbers of Bidders," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(419), pages 868-879, July.
    19. Andreas Roider & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2012. "Auctions with Anticipated Emotions: Overbidding, Underbidding, and Optimal Reserve Prices," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(3), pages 808-830, September.
    20. Emiel Maasland & Sander Onderstal, 2007. "Auctions with Financial Externalities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(3), pages 551-574, September.
    21. Blume, Andreas & Heidhues, Paul, 2004. "All equilibria of the Vickrey auction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 170-177, January.
    22. Andreoni, James & Che, Yeon-Koo & Kim, Jinwoo, 2007. "Asymmetric information about rivals' types in standard auctions: An experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 240-259, May.
    23. Bierbrauer, Felix & Ockenfels, Axel & Pollak, Andreas & Rückert, Désirée, 2017. "Robust mechanism design and social preferences," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 59-80.
    24. Martin Dufwenberg & Paul Heidhues & Georg Kirchsteiger & Frank Riedel & Joel Sobel, 2011. "Other-Regarding Preferences in General Equilibrium," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(2), pages 613-639.
    25. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    26. Vincent P. Crawford & Nagore Iriberri, 2007. "Level-k Auctions: Can a Nonequilibrium Model of Strategic Thinking Explain the Winner's Curse and Overbidding in Private-Value Auctions?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(6), pages 1721-1770, November.
    27. Goeree, Jacob K. & Holt, Charles A. & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2002. "Quantal Response Equilibrium and Overbidding in Private-Value Auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 104(1), pages 247-272, May.
    28. McAfee, R Preston & McMillan, John, 1992. "Bidding Rings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 579-599, June.
      • McAfee, R. Preston & McMillan, John., 1990. "Bidding Rings," Working Papers 726, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    29. Ty Feldkamp & Ted C. Schroeder, 2004. "Experimental Auction Procedure: Impact on Valuation of Quality Differentiated Goods," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 86(2), pages 389-405.
    30. Lange, Andreas & Ratan, Anmol, 2010. "Multi-dimensional reference-dependent preferences in sealed-bid auctions - How (most) laboratory experiments differ from the field," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 634-645, March.
    31. Maxim Engers & Brian McManus, 2007. "Charity Auctions," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 48(3), pages 953-994, August.
    32. William Vickrey, 1961. "Counterspeculation, Auctions, And Competitive Sealed Tenders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 16(1), pages 8-37, March.
    33. Ockenfels, Axel & Selten, Reinhard, 2005. "Impulse balance equilibrium and feedback in first price auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 155-170, April.
    34. Riley, John G & Samuelson, William F, 1981. "Optimal Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 381-392, June.
    35. Bierbrauer, Felix & Netzer, Nick, 2016. "Mechanism design and intentions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 557-603.
    36. Erik O Kimbrough & J Philipp Reiss, 2012. "Measuring the Distribution of Spitefulness," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(8), pages 1-8, August.
    37. Hu, Audrey & Offerman, Theo & Onderstal, Sander, 2011. "Fighting collusion in auctions: An experimental investigation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 84-96, January.
    38. Jones, Garett, 2008. "Are smarter groups more cooperative? Evidence from prisoner's dilemma experiments, 1959-2003," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(3-4), pages 489-497, December.
    39. Jacob K. Goeree & Emiel Maasland & Sander Onderstal & John L. Turner, 2005. "How (Not) to Raise Money," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(4), pages 897-926, August.
    40. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    41. Philippe Jehiel & Benny Moldovanu, 2000. "Auctions with Downstream Interaction Among Buyers," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(4), pages 768-791, Winter.
    42. Emel Filiz-Ozbay & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2007. "Auctions with Anticipated Regret: Theory and Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1407-1418, September.
    43. repec:cup:judgdm:v:3:y:2008:i:7:p:483-492 is not listed on IDEAS
    44. DavidJ. Cooper & Hanming Fang, 2008. "Understanding Overbidding In Second Price Auctions: An Experimental Study," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(532), pages 1572-1595, October.
    45. Philippe Jehiel & Benny Moldovanu, 2005. "Allocative and Informational Externalities in Auctions and Related Mechanisms," Levine's Bibliography 784828000000000490, UCLA Department of Economics.
    46. Charles Bellemare & Alexander Sebald, 2011. "Learning about a Class of Belief-Dependent Preferences without Information on Beliefs," Cahiers de recherche 1125, CIRPEE.
    47. Ettinger, David, 2003. "Efficiency in auctions with crossholdings," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 1-7, July.
    48. Glazer, Jacob & Rubinstein, Ariel, 1998. "Motives and Implementation: On the Design of Mechanisms to Elicit Opinions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 157-173, April.
    49. Bodoh-Creed, Aaron L., 2012. "Ambiguous beliefs and mechanism design," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 518-537.
    50. Loyola, Gino, 2007. "How to sell to buyers with crossholdings," UC3M Working papers. Economics we075025, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    51. Naoko Nishimura & Timothy N. Cason & Tatsuyoshi Saijo & Yoshikazu Ikeda, 2011. "Spite and Reciprocity in Auctions," Games, MDPI, vol. 2(3), pages 1-47, September.
    52. Mas-Colell, Andreu & Whinston, Michael D. & Green, Jerry R., 1995. "Microeconomic Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195102680.
    53. Bohnet, Iris & Zeckhauser, Richard, 2004. "Trust, risk and betrayal," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 467-484, December.
    54. Ben-Ner, Avner & Kong, Fanmin & Putterman, Louis, 2004. "Share and share alike? Gender-pairing, personality, and cognitive ability as determinants of giving," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 581-589, October.
    55. Andreoni, James, 1989. "Giving with Impure Altruism: Applications to Charity and Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1447-1458, December.
    56. Lu, Jingfeng, 2012. "Optimal auctions with asymmetric financial externalities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 561-575.
    57. Chillemi, Ottorino, 2005. "Cross-owned firms competing in auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 1-19, April.
    58. Kagel, John H & Harstad, Ronald M & Levin, Dan, 1987. "Information Impact and Allocation Rules in Auctions with Affiliated Private Values: A Laboratory Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(6), pages 1275-1304, November.
    59. Battigalli, Pierpaolo & Siniscalchi, Marciano, 2003. "Rationalizable bidding in first-price auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 38-72, October.
    60. Graham, Daniel A & Marshall, Robert C, 1987. "Collusive Bidder Behavior at Single-Object Second-Price and English Auctions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(6), pages 1217-1239, December.
    61. repec:adr:anecst:y:2008:i:90:p:09 is not listed on IDEAS
    62. Maskin, Eric S & Riley, John G, 1984. "Optimal Auctions with Risk Averse Buyers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1473-1518, November.
    63. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5431 is not listed on IDEAS
    64. Erik O Kimbrough & J Philipp Reiss, 2012. "Measuring the Distribution of Spitefulness," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(8), pages 1-8, August.
    65. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5448 is not listed on IDEAS
    66. Morgan John & Steiglitz Ken & Reis George, 2003. "The Spite Motive and Equilibrium Behavior in Auctions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-25, April.
    67. Eso, Peter & Futo, Gabor, 1999. "Auction design with a risk averse seller," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 71-74, October.
    68. Sudipto Dasgupta & Kevin Tsui, 2004. "Auctions with cross-shareholdings," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 24(1), pages 163-194, July.
    69. Vincent P. Crawford & Tamar Kugler & Zvika Neeman & Ady Pauzner, 2009. "Behaviorally Optimal Auction Design: Examples and Observations," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 377-387, 04-05.
    70. Bock, Olaf & Baetge, Ingmar & Nicklisch, Andreas, 2014. "hroot: Hamburg Registration and Organization Online Tool," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 117-120.
    71. Jacob K. Goeree & Theo Offerman, 2004. "Notes and Comments the Amsterdam Auction," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 281-294, January.
    72. Cox, James C & Smith, Vernon L & Walker, James M, 1988. "Theory and Individual Behavior of First-Price Auctions," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 61-99, March.
    73. Mares, Vlad & Swinkels, Jeroen M., 2011. "Near-optimality of second price mechanisms in a class of asymmetric auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 218-241, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Björn Bartling & Tobias Gesche & Nick Netzer, 2017. "Does the absence of human sellers bias bidding behavior in auction experiments?," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 3(1), pages 44-61, July.
    2. Bierbrauer, Felix & Netzer, Nick, 2016. "Mechanism design and intentions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 557-603.
    3. Oliver Kirchkamp & Wladislaw Mill, 2019. "Spite vs. risk: explaining overbidding," CESifo Working Paper Series 7631, CESifo.
    4. Tan, Charmaine H.Y., 2020. "Overbidding and matching rules in second-price auctions: An experimental study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    5. Kaplan, Todd R. & Zamir, Shmuel, 2015. "Advances in Auctions," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    6. Lorentziadis, Panos L., 2016. "Optimal bidding in auctions from a game theory perspective," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 248(2), pages 347-371.
    7. Kirchkamp, Oliver & Mill, Wladislaw, 2021. "Spite vs. risk: Explaining overbidding in the second-price all-pay auction," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 616-635.
    8. Jehiel, Philippe & Moldovanu, Benny, 2005. "Allocative and Informational Externalities in Auctions and Related Mechanisms," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 142, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    9. Lu, Jingfeng, 2012. "Optimal auctions with asymmetric financial externalities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 561-575.
    10. Vasserman, Shoshana & Watt, Mitchell, 2021. "Risk aversion and auction design: Theoretical and empirical evidence," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    11. Kirchkamp, O. & Reiss, J.P. & Sadrieh, A., 2008. "A pure variation of risk in private-value auctions," Research Memorandum 050, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    12. Andreas Roider & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2012. "Auctions with Anticipated Emotions: Overbidding, Underbidding, and Optimal Reserve Prices," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(3), pages 808-830, September.
    13. Mill, Wladislaw, 2017. "The spite motive in third price auctions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 71-73.
    14. Mill, Wladislaw & Morgan, John, 2022. "Competition between friends and foes," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    15. Gino Loyola, 2021. "Optimal selling mechanisms with crossholdings," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 25(1), pages 1-32, June.
    16. Peter Cramton & Emel Filiz-Ozbay & Erkut Ozbay & Pacharasut Sujarittanonta, 2012. "Discrete clock auctions: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(2), pages 309-322, June.
    17. Rosato, Antonio & Tymula, Agnieszka A., 2019. "Loss aversion and competition in Vickrey auctions: Money ain't no good," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 188-208.
    18. Rosato, Antonio & Tymula, Agnieszka A., 2024. "A novel experimental test of truthful bidding in second-price auctions with real objects," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    19. Loyola, Gino, 2012. "Optimal and efficient takeover contests with toeholds," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 203-216.
    20. Bierbrauer, Felix & Ockenfels, Axel & Pollak, Andreas & Rückert, Désirée, 2017. "Robust mechanism design and social preferences," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 59-80.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Robust mechanism design; spiteful preferences; experimental auctions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zur:econwp:153. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Severin Oswald (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/seizhch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.