Public Reserve Price Research Articles

Reserve Price Signaling with Public Information: Evidence from Online Auto Auctions

This paper studies the problem of information provision in auctions. The linkage principle indicates that credibly revealing private information would benefit the seller, which implies that a seller should prefer a public reserve price to a secret one if the reserve price could reveal her private information. However, information revelation may backfire if the seller's information is not verifiable, and the reserve price works as a signaling device. In this paper, we consider an auction model in which a seller's choice of reserve price signals her private information about the object's quality. We show that such a signaling incentive could decrease the seller's profit and probability of sale in equilibrium, with a larger impact when the seller's private information is more precise relative to the public information announced by a third party. We estimate the reserve price signaling model using a novel dataset from a large online auto auction platform. We find that the signaling incentive could cost the seller 4% of her profit, and decrease the probability of sale by 15 percentage points. Counterfactual simulations suggest that a secret reserve price can improve both the seller's profit and probability of sale, especially when the signaling incentive is strong. Our findings support the prevalent use of secret reserve prices in practice, contrary to the predictions of linkage principle.

Reserve prices in auctions with entry when the seller is risk-averse

We show that risk aversion raises the public reserve price rP above the seller’s cost c, but lowers the secret reserve price rS below the revenue maximizing reserve price r0. Further, rP<rS. Hence, for a risk averse seller, public and secret reserve prices are ordered: c<rP<rS<r0.

Secret versus public reserve price in an “outcry” English procurement auction: Experimental results

In a set of human experiments, we analyze the impact of the buyer׳s reserve price policy in an online open outcry reverse auction. We measure the impact of revealing or not the reserve price on the buyer׳s expected cost when suppliers may be risk-averse. Results confirm that the optimal public reserve price policy dominates for the buyer when the lowest cost supplier is weakly risk-averse but in contrast with theory, the secret reserve price policy does not dominate when he becomes very risk-averse. Analysis of strategic suppliers׳ bidding behavior shows, in conformity with theory, that they react to the secret reserve price and are more aggressive when they are more risk-averse. This explains why the optimal public reserve price does not perform better in this context but is equivalent to the secret one. However, strongly risk-averse bidders are less aggressive than predicted by theory. That is why the secret reserve price policy does not strictly dominate.

A meta-analysis on the effects of online auction design options: The moderating effect of value uncertainty

Online auction design options (the public reserve price, secret reserve option and buy-out option) are critical in determining auction outcomes (the number of bids, the probability of sale and auction price). However, previous studies about the impacts of online auction design options on auction outcomes have generated inconsistent or even contradictory results. To synthesize the inconsistencies and reach more substantive conclusions, we conduct this meta-analysis study. Furthermore, to explain the inconsistencies, we identify the value uncertainty of auction items as a key moderator on the impacts of auction design options on auction outcomes, and verify the moderating effects using meta-analysis methods. This study has three main findings: (i) the public reserve price has a positive effect on the auction price, and this effect is stronger when the value uncertainty of auction items is higher; (ii) the secret reserve option has a positive effect on the auction price when auction items are of low value uncertainty, but the magnitude of this effect decreases when the value uncertainty increases; (iii) the buy-out option has positive effects on both the probability of sale and the auction price when auction items are of low value uncertainty, but has negative effects on these two auction outcomes when auction items are of high value uncertainty.

Why the Reserve Price Should Not Be Kept Secret

This paper considers the optimality of setting a secret reserve price in ascending auctions. Contrary to intuition, an ascending auction is no longer equivalent to a second price auction when the reserve price is secret. We determine the seller's optimal reserve price policy when the bidders' values are private and independently distributed and when the bidders are risk averse. We show that an optimal secret reserve price policy can dominate an optimal public reserve price policy when the bidders' degree of constant relative risk aversion is sufficiently high and when the seller can commit to a reserve price policy before learning her type. In contrast, a secret reserve price policy can never be part of a Bayesian equilibrium when the seller is informed.

Optimal Starting Price for Ebay-Like Online Auctions

Reserve price auctions are one of hot research issues in traditional auction theory. Here we study the starting price in an online auction, the counterpart of the public reserve price in a traditional auction. By considering three features of eBay-like online auctions: stochastic entry of bidders (subject to Poisson process), insertion fee proportional to the starting price, and time discount, we have analyzed the properties of extremum points of the starting price for maximizing the seller's expected revenue, and found that, under certain conditions, the optimal starting price should be at the lowest allowable level, which is contrary to the results from the classic auction theory and finds its optimality in reality. We have also developed a general extended model of multistage auctions and carried out analysis on its properties. At last, some directions for further research are also put forward.