Abstract
In many auctions, buyers know beforehand little about objects to be sold in the future. Whether and how to reveal information about future objects is an important decision problem for sellers. In this paper, two objects are sold sequentially and each buyer’s valuation for the second object is k times that for the first one, and the true value of k is sellers’ private information. The authors identify three factors which affect sellers’ revelation strategies: The market’s competition intensity which is characterized by the number of buyers, buyers’ prior information about the second object, and the difference degree between two objects which is characterized by k. The authors give not only conditions under which revealing information about the second object in advance benefits the seller, but also the optimal releasing amount of information in the market with two sellers and one seller, respectively.
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This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 61273206 and 71471069.
This paper was recommended for publication by Editor ZHANG Xun.
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Hu, E., Zhao, Y. & Rao, C. Information revelation in sequential auctions with uncertainties about future objects. J Syst Sci Complex 29, 1617–1628 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11424-016-4315-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11424-016-4315-1