Optimal selling mechanisms under moment conditions

Resumo

We study the revenue maximization problem of a seller who is partially informed about the distribution of buyer's valuations, only knowing its first N moments. The seller chooses the mechanism generating the best revenue guarantee based on the information available, that is, the optimal revenue is given by maxmin expected revenue. We show that the transfer function in the optimal mechanism is given by non-negative monotonic hull of a polynomial of degree N. This enables us to transform the seller's problem into a much simpler optimization problem over N variables. The optimal mechanism is found by choosing the coefficients of the polynomial subject to a resource constraint. We show that knowledge of the first moment does not guarantee strictly positive revenue for the seller, characterize the solution for the cases of two moments and derive some characteristics of the solution for the general case.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Outro

Ano

2017

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Inglês

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/27677

Temas

Economia

Palavras-chave

Optimal mechanism designRobustnessIncentive compatibilityIndividual rationalityAmbiguity aversionMoment conditionsEconomiaMercado de capitaisContratos administrativos