Wednesday, January 29, 2014

[qhekrotu] Auction of identical items

Take sealed bids for N identical items being auctioned separately, and sell them to the N highest bidders all at the price of the N+1st highest bid.  This is in contrast to the more profitable system of selling the k-th item for the k+1st bid.  Does this retain the same desirable auction properties as the English auction?

The goal is to retain some appearance of fairness, "everyone pays the same price" as opposed to evil seeming price gouging.

Inspired by tickets to popular events selling out in a very short time.

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