Speaker:     Rachel Liu

Affiliation: The University of Auckland

Title:       Generalised Second-Price Auctions

Date:        Monday, 4 Apr 2016

Time:        4:00 pm

Location:    Clock Tower 032

We model the Generalized Second-Price Auction for internet advertising as a strategic form game with complete information. We begin with the simplest game in which two advertisers bid against each other over two advertising positions. We show that each advertiser has a unique weakly dominant strategy and there are multiple Nash equilibria. We then study the game with three advertisers and three positions and show that no player has a dominant strategy.  Each of the six possible allocations may arise as Nash equilibrium. It is not clear which allocation results in the largest welfare loss compared to the socially optimal outcome.  In the general case no player has a dominant strategy as well.

Everyone welcome!