Aaron L. Bodoh-CreedUniversity of California, BerkeleyJörn BoehnkeHarvard UniversityBrent HickmanUniversity of Chicago
Publications of CMSA of Harvardmathscidoc:1702.38005
We provide a model of a decentralized, dynamic auction market platform (e.g.,
eBay) in which a large number of buyers and sellers participate in simultaneous, singleunit
auctions each period. Our model accounts for the endogenous entry of agents and
the impact of intertemporal optimization on bids. Solving our model with a finite number
of bidders is computationally intractable due to the curse of dimensionality, so we prove
that a continuum version of our model provides a good approximation of an equilibrium
in the finite model. We use the approximation to estimate the structural primitives of our
model using Kindle sales on eBay. We find that just over one third of Kindle auctions on
eBay result in an inefficient allocation with deadweight loss amounting to 13.5% of total
possible market surplus. We also find that partial centralization - for example, runnng
half as many 2-unit, uniform price auctions each day - would eliminate a large fraction
of the inefficiency, but yield lower seller revenues. Our results highlight the importance
of understanding platform composition effects—selection of agents into the market—in
assessing the implications of market design.
@inproceedings{aaronhow,
title={HOW EFFICIENT ARE DECENTRALIZED AUCTION PLATFORMS?},
author={Aaron L. Bodoh-Creed, Jörn Boehnke, and Brent Hickman},
url={http://archive.ymsc.tsinghua.edu.cn/pacm_paperurl/20170206234126362019204},
}
Aaron L. Bodoh-Creed, Jörn Boehnke, and Brent Hickman. HOW EFFICIENT ARE DECENTRALIZED AUCTION PLATFORMS?. http://archive.ymsc.tsinghua.edu.cn/pacm_paperurl/20170206234126362019204.