Publication

The assumption of completely informed bidders is most realistic in the context of auctions that are repeated frequently involving the same bidders.  Livestock auctions, especially the electronic kind in which bidders bid on homogenous virtual animals, are good examples.  Our note shows that asymmetric allocations of objects among completely informed and identical bidders in sequential auctions is to be regarded as a natural outcome, not as an exception.  When allocations are asymmetric, prices are weakly declining (i.e., they fall but there could be flat segments) and payoffs are the same for all players, implying that bidders who win fewer objects get the ones sold at lower prices.  In contrast, symmetric allocations which are possible under specific conditions on the bidders' valuations produce constant prices.  The conditions required to support symmetric allocations become increasingly restrictive as the number of objects increase.