Revenue-Maximizing Auctions: A Bidder’s Standpoint
研究了在卖家不承诺使用固定拍卖机制时，激励相容拍卖中投标者不应按真实估值出价，并提供了理论和数值方法帮助投标者优化策略。
A vast part of the Internet economy is powered by advertising, much of which is sold at auction. A key question for sellers is how to optimize the auction mechanism they use. Bidders, conversely, try to optimize their bidding strategy. Incentive compatible auctions are a sweet spot: theory predicts that it is in the bidders' interest to bid their values, making it relatively easy for them to bid optimally. However, as they learn bidders' value distributions, sellers can progressively optimize their mechanism and extract more revenue from bidders. We show that, in sharp contrast with most results in the academic literature, bidders should not be bidding their value in incentive compatible auctions when there is no commitment from the seller about using a fixed auction. We provide a mix of theoretical and numerical results and practical methods that can easily be deployed in practice.