Multi-object auctions: sequential vs. simultaneous sales
Management Science
Bidding under uncertainty: theory and experiments
UAI '04 Proceedings of the 20th conference on Uncertainty in artificial intelligence
Sequential auctions for objects with common and private values
Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems
A comparative study of sequential and simultaneous auctions
AAMAS '06 Proceedings of the fifth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems
Sequential bundle-bid single-sale auction algorithms for decentralized control
IJCAI'07 Proceedings of the 20th international joint conference on Artifical intelligence
Bidding efficiently in repeated auctions with entry and observation costs
GameNets'09 Proceedings of the First ICST international conference on Game Theory for Networks
Sequential auctions for common value objects with budget constrained bidders
Multiagent and Grid Systems - Advances in Agent-mediated Automated Negotiations
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Sequential and simultaneous auctions are two important mechanisms for buying and selling multiple objects. These two mechanisms yield different outcomes (i.e., different surpluses, different revenues, and also different profits to the winning bidders). Given this, we compare the outcomes for the sequential and simultaneous mechanisms for the following scenario. There are multiple similar objects for sale, each object is sold in a separate auction, and each bidder needs only one object. Furthermore, each object has both common and private value components and bidders are uncertain about these values. We first determine the equilibrium bidding strategies for each individual auction for the simultaneous and sequential cases. We do this for the English auction rules, the first-price sealed bid rules, and the second-price sealed bid rules. We then consider the case where the private and common values have a uniform distribution and compare the two mechanisms in terms of a bidder's ex-ante expected profit, the auctioneer's expected cumulative revenue, and the expected cumulative surplus. Our study shows that, for all the three auction rules, the expected cumulative surplus and the auctioneer's expected cumulative revenue is higher for the sequential mechanism. However, the mechanism that generates a higher ex-ante expected profit for the bidders depends on the number of objects being auctioned and the number of participating bidders, and it is sometimes higher for sequential mechanism and sometimes for the simultaneous one.