Below is the information for today's talk.
Title: Why Do Competitive Markets Converge to First-Price Auctions?
Abstract: We consider a setting in which bidders participate in multiple auctions run by different sellers, and optimize their bids for the aggregate auction. We
analyze this setting by formulating a game between sellers, where a seller's strategy is to pick an auction to run. Our analysis aims to shed light on the recent change in the Display Ads market landscape: here, adexchanges (sellers) were mostly running second
price auctions earlier and over time they switched to variants of the first price auction, culminating in Google's Ad Exchange moving to a first price auction in 2019. Our model and results offer an explanation for why the first price auction occurs as
a natural equilibrium in such competitive markets. This is joint work with Renato Paes Leme and Balasubramanian Sivan.
The spreadsheet for this semester is as below:
Students are encouraged to sign up to give an (informal) talk. Also, professors are certainly welcome to add a note if free food will be provided.
Thanks,
Yifeng