Robust Analysis of Auction Equilibria
Research Seminars: Virtual Market Design SeminarEquilibria in auctions can be very difficult to analyze, beyond the symmetric environments where revenue equivalence renders the analysis straightforward. The paper presented in this Research Seminar takes a robust approach to evaluating the equilibria of auctions. Rather than identify the equilibria of an auction under specific environments, it considers min-max analysis where an auction is evaluated according to the worst environment and worst equilibrium in that environment. It identifies a non-equilibrium property of auctions that governs whether or not their worst-case equilibria are good for welfare and revenue. This property is easy to analyze, can be refined from data, and composes across markets where multiple auctions are run simultaneously.
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