A lower bound on seller revenue in single buyer monopoly auctions

Abstract

We consider a monopoly seller who optimally auctions a single object to a single potential buyer, with a known distribution of valuations. We show that a tight lower bound on the seller’s expected revenue is 1/e times the geometric expectation of the buyer’s valuation, and that this bound is uniquely achieved for the equal revenue distribution. We show also that when the valuation’s expectation and geometric expectation are close, then the seller’s expected revenue is close to the expected valuation.