I want to tell you? Maximizing revenue in first-price two-stage auctions (Q6063109)

In this article, the authors examine the effects of new information regarding competitors, seeking to determine what information the auctioneer should provide assuming the set of allowable bids is discrete. More precisely, the authors characterize the strategy profile that maximizes the revenue of the seller is an equilibrium for a large enough number of bidders, regardless of the information released between the stages (see Theorem 1) and compare the number of bidders required for this strategy profile to be an equilibrium across different information structures. It is shown that the less information is given to the bidders, the fewer bidders are required to maintain this strategy profile as an equilibrium (see Corollary 1). As a result, while designing the auction and committing to an information structure, there are some advantages for the seller to prefer an auction without revealing information between the stages, as the number of participating bidders is still unknown. Section 6 includes the concluding remarks and a discussion of the remaining open questions. In Appendix D the authors discuss auctions with a continuum of private values and possible bids.