Vadim Marmer (UBC Vancouver School of Economics) will present “Informed Entry in First-Price Auctions” (joint with Jun Ma (Renmin U) and Pai Xu (HKU).
Time and venue: May 3, Wednesday, 11.15 am – 12.30 pm, in QS C-322, RSVP required.
Abstract: We study the role of information in first-price auctions with selective entry. In this model, bidders do not know their actual values before entering and only observe imperfect signals. We use a semiparametric copula-based model to identify and estimate the information effects. More informative signals are favorable to the seller because the value distribution for entering bidders is more stochastically dominant. However, due to the entry cost, the equilibrium effect of more informative signals may reduce entry and reduce the seller’s expected revenue. We estimate the model using data from Texas Department of Transportation (TDoT) procurement auctions and find that there is an optimal level of signals’ informativeness, and TDoT should prefer well (although not perfectly) informed bidders.