Related papers: Estimation of Standard Auction Models
We introduce several new estimation methods that leverage shape constraints in auction models to estimate various objects of interest, including the distribution of a bidder's valuations, the bidder's ex ante expected surplus, and the…
In many first-price auctions, bidders face considerable strategic uncertainty: They cannot perfectly anticipate the other bidders' bidding behavior. We propose a model in which bidders do not know the entire distribution of opponent bids…
We study a seller who sells a single good to multiple bidders with uncertainty over the joint distribution of bidders' valuations, as well as bidders' higher-order beliefs about their opponents. The seller only knows the (possibly…
This paper studies inference in first-price and second-price sealed-bid auctions with many bidders, using an asymptotic framework where the number of bidders increases while the number of auctions remains fixed. Our approach enables…
Investigating potential purchases is often a substantial investment under uncertainty. Standard market designs, such as simultaneous or English auctions, compound this with uncertainty about the price a bidder will have to pay in order to…
We focus on online second price auctions, where bids are made sequentially, and the winning bidder pays the maximum of the second-highest bid and a seller specified starting price. For many such auctions, the seller does not see all the…
Auction data often contain information on only the most competitive bids as opposed to all bids. The usual measurement error approaches to unobserved heterogeneity are inapplicable due to dependence among order statistics. We bridge this…
We present an extensive analysis of the key problem of learning optimal reserve prices for generalized second price auctions. We describe two algorithms for this task: one based on density estimation, and a novel algorithm benefiting from…
We propose a semiparametric method to estimate the density of private values in first-price auctions. Specifically, we model private values through a set of conditional moment restrictions and use a two-step procedure. In the first step we…
We consider nonparametric identification of independent private value first-price auction models, in which the analyst only observes winning bids. Our benchmark model assumes an exogenous number of bidders $N$. We show that, if the bidders…
We propose a new nonparametric estimator for first-price auctions with independent private values that imposes the monotonicity constraint on the estimated inverse bidding strategy. We show that our estimator has a smaller asymptotic…
We establish nonparametric identification of auction models with continuous and nonseparable unobserved heterogeneity using three consecutive order statistics of bids. We then propose sieve maximum likelihood estimators for the joint…
While auction theory views bids and valuations as continuous variables, real-world auctions are necessarily discrete. In this paper, we use a combination of analytical and computational methods to investigate whether incorporating…
Given a sample of bids from independent auctions, this paper examines the question of inference on auction fundamentals (e.g. valuation distributions, welfare measures) under weak assumptions on information structure. The question is…
Since economic mechanisms are often applied to very different instances of the same problem, it is desirable to identify mechanisms that work well in a wide range of circumstances. We pursue this goal for a position auction setting and…
In practice, most auction mechanisms are not strategy-proof, so equilibrium analysis is required to predict bidding behavior. In many auctions, though, an exact equilibrium is not known and one would like to understand whether -- manually…
This survey outlines a general and modular theory for proving approximation guarantees for equilibria of auctions in complex settings. This theory complements traditional economic techniques, which generally focus on exact and optimal…
We study independent private values auction environments in which the auctioneer's revenue depends nonlinearly on bidders' interim winning probabilities. Our framework accommodates heterogeneity among bidders and places no ad hoc…
Simultaneous ascending auctions present agents with the exposure problem: bidding to acquire a bundle risks the possibility of obtaining an undesired subset of the goods. Auction theory provides little guidance for dealing with this…
Developing efficient sequential bidding strategies for repeated auctions is an important practical challenge in various marketing tasks. In this setting, the bidding agent obtains information, on both the value of the item at sale and the…