Numerical Analysis Seminar

Seminar information archive ~03/29Next seminarFuture seminars 03/30~

Date, time & place Tuesday 16:30 - 18:00 002Room #002 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)
Organizer(s) Norikazu Saito, Takahito Kashiwabara

2015/03/20

13:30-15:00   Room #122 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)
Gadi Fibich (Tel Aviv University)
Asymmetric Auctions (English)
[ Abstract ]
Auctions are central to the modern economy, both on-line and off-line. A fundamental result in auction theory is that when bidders are symmetric (identical), then under quite general conditions, all auctions are revenue equivalent. While it is known that this result does not hold when bidders are asymmetric, the effect of bidders' asymmetry is poorly understood, since asymmetric auctions are much harder to analyze.

In this talk I will discuss the mathematical theory of asymmetric auctions. I will focus on asymmetric first-price auctions, where the mathematical model is given by a nonstandard system of $n$ nonlinear ordinary differential equations, with $2n$ boundary conditions and a free boundary. I will present various analytic and numerical approaches for this system. Then I will present some recent results on asymptotic revenue equivalence of asymmetric auctions.

Joint work with A. Gavious and N. Gavish.