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Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science pp 1–14Cite as

Auctions

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Glossary

All-pay first-price auction:

Bidders submit sealed bids. The high bidder wins the item. In case of a tie, the auctioneer randomly assigns the item to one of the high bidders with equal probability. All bidders (including losing bidders) pay their bid.

Bayesian Nash equilibrium:

A Bayesian Nash equilibrium is a collection of bidding strategies so that (i) no bidder has an incentive to deviate and (ii) beliefs are consistent with the underlying informational assumptions.

Bidding strategy:

A bidding strategy for a buyer is a mapping from the buyer’s signal into bid prices.

Dutch auction:

Price falls until one bidder presses her button. That bidder gets the object at the current price. Losers pay nothing.

English auction:

Bidders call out successively higher prices until one bidder remains. The item is allocated to the last remaining bidder at the price at which the second last bidder dropped out.

First-price auction:

Bidders submit sealed bids. The high bidder wins the item and...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Martin Pesendorfer

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  1. Martin Pesendorfer
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Correspondence to Martin Pesendorfer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ramtech Ltd., Larkspur, California, USA

    Robert A. Meyers

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Pesendorfer, M. (2018). Auctions. In: Meyers, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27737-5_669-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27737-5_669-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-27737-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27737-5

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