On the equivalence between descending bid auctions and first price sealed bid auctions

Abstract

Bidding the same price in descending bid auctions and in first price sealed bid auctions is equivalent to expected utility maximizing behavior, and this is equivalent to dynamically consistent bidding. The claim that, in strategic form, descending bid and first price sealed bid auctions are the same game is thus shown to be false, since the mapping from strategies to payoffs is not the same for the two auction forms.