Published September 2013
| Version Submitted
Journal Article
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A lower bound on seller revenue in single buyer monopoly auctions
Abstract
We consider a monopoly seller who optimally auctions a single object to a single potential buyer, with a known distribution of valuations. We show that a tight lower bound on the seller's expected revenue is 1/e times the geometric expectation of the buyer's valuation, and that this bound is uniquely achieved for the equal revenue distribution. We show also that when the valuation's expectation and geometric expectation are close, then the seller's expected revenue is close to the expected valuation.
Additional Information
© 2013 Elsevier B.V. Received 30 May 2012, Revised 29 May 2013, Accepted 29 May 2013, Available online 6 June 2013. We would like to thank Elchanan Mossel for commenting on a preliminary version of this paper. We owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous reviewer who helped us improve the paper significantly through many helpful suggestions. This research is supported by ISF grant 1300/08, and by a Google Europe Fellowship in Social Computing.Attached Files
Submitted - 1204.5551.pdf
Files
1204.5551.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 71969
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.orl.2013.05.011
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20161114-065718415
Related works
- Describes
- 10.1016/j.orl.2013.05.011 (DOI)
- https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.5551 (URL)
Funding
- Israel Science Foundation
- 1300/08
Dates
- Created
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2016-11-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field
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- Mathematics Department