Reduced form auctions revisited (Q868419)

The author considers general asymmetric auctions with a finite type space and asks about the conditions for such an auction to be of reduced form (implementable). Given a set of types, the reduced form of an auction determines the probability that a bidder from this set of types wins. Such problems were considered for symmetric auctions in: \textit{S. A. Matthews} [Econometrica 52, 1519--1522 (1984; Zbl 0594.90020)], \textit{E. Maskin} and \textit{J. Riley} [Econometrica 52, 1473--1518 (1984; Zbl 0605.90043)] and \textit{K. C. Border} [Econometrica 59, No. 4, 1175--1187 (1991; Zbl 0754.90018)]. A variant of the Theorem of the Alternative is used to obtain simpler proofs of these known results and to prove the main result of the paper which is a new theorem on the implementability of general asymmetric auctions.