A first-price sealed-bid auction (FPSBA) is a common type of auction. It is also known as blind auction.[1] In this type of auction, all bidders simultaneously submit sealed bids so that no bidder knows the bid of any other participant. The highest bidder pays the price that was submitted.
In a FPSBA, each bidder is characterized by their monetary valuation of the item for sale.
Suppose Alice is a bidder and her valuation is
a
a
a
a
a
Alice would like to bid the smallest amount that can make her win the item, as long as this amount is less than
a
y
y<a
y+\varepsilon
\varepsilon
Unfortunately, Alice does not know what the other bidders are going to bid. Moreover, she does not even know the valuations of the other bidders. Hence, strategically, we have a Bayesian game - a game in which agents do not know the payoffs of the other agents.
The interesting challenge in such a game is to find a Bayesian Nash equilibrium. However, this is not easy even when there are only two bidders. The situation is simpler when the valuations of the bidders are independent and identically distributed random variables, so that the valuations are all drawn from a known prior distribution.
Suppose there are two bidders, Alice and Bob, whose valuations
a
b
a/2
b/2
PROOF: The proof takes the point-of-view of Alice. We assume that she knows that Bob bids
f(b)=b/2
b
x
x\geqf(b)
a-x
f-1(x)=2x
x<f(b)
1-f-1(x)
G(x)=f-1(x) ⋅ (a-x)
G'(x)=0
G'(x)=-f-1(x)+(a-x) ⋅ {1\overf'(f-1(x))}
x
f-1(x)=(a-x) ⋅ {1\overf'(f-1(x))}
x
f(a)
f-1(f(a))=(a-f(a)) ⋅ {1\overf'(f-1(f(a)))}
a=(a-f(a)) ⋅ {1\overf'(a)}
af'(a)=(a-f(a))
f(a)=a/2
Denote by:
vi
i
yi
i
yi=maxj ≠ {vj}
i
E[yi|yi<vi]
The FPSBA is not incentive-compatible even in the weak sense of Bayesian-Nash-Incentive-Compatibility (BNIC), since there is no Bayesian-Nash equilibrium in which bidders report their true value.
However, it is easy to create a variant of FPSBA which is BNIC, if the priors on the valuations are common knowledge. For example, for the case of Alice and Bob described above, the rules of the BNIC variant are:
In effect, this variant simulates the Bayesian-Nash equilibrium strategies of the players, so in the Bayesian-Nash equilibrium, both bidders bid their true value.
This example is a special case of a much more general principle: the revelation principle.
The following table compares FPSBA to sealed-bid second-price auction (SPSBA):
| Auction: | First-price | Second-price | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner: | Agent with highest bid | Agent with highest bid | |||||||
| Winner pays: | Winner's bid | Second-highest bid | |||||||
| Loser pays: | 0 | 0 | |||||||
| Dominant strategy | No dominant strategy | Bidding truthfully is dominant strategy[3] | |||||||
| Bayesian Nash equilibrium[4] | Bidder i
vi | Bidder i vi | |||||||
| Auctioneer's revenue |
|
|
The auctioneer's revenue is calculated in the example case, in which the valuations of the agents are drawn independently and uniformly at random from [0,1]. As an example, when there are
n=2
max(a/2,b/2)
min(a,b)
This fact that the revenue is the same is not a coincidence - it is a special case of the revenue equivalence theorem. This holds only when the agents' valuations are statistically independent; when the valuations are dependent, we have a common value auction, and in this case, the revenue in a second-price auction is usually higher than in a first-price auction.
The item for sale may not be sold if the final bid is not high enough to satisfy the seller, that is, the seller reserves the right to accept or reject the highest bid. If the seller announces to the bidders the reserve price, it is a public reserve price auction.[5] In contrast, if the seller does not announce the reserve price before the sale but only after the sale, it is a secret reserve price auction.[6]
A FPSBA is distinct from the English auction in that bidders can only submit one bid each. Furthermore, as bidders cannot see the bids of other participants, they cannot adjust their own bids accordingly.
FPSBA has been argued to be strategically equivalent to the Dutch auction.
What are effectively FPSBA are commonly called tendering for procurement by companies and organizations, particularly for government contracts and auctions for mining leases. FPSBA are thought to lead to low procurement costs through competition and low corruption through increased transparency, even though they may entail a higher ex-post extra cost of the completed project and extra time to complete it.[7]
A generalized first-price auction is a non-truthful auction mechanism for sponsored search (aka position auction).
A generalization of both 1st-price and 2nd-price auctions is an auction in which the price is some convex combination of the 1st and 2nd price.[8]
n