It’s worth acknowledging that “stragegy-proof” is a pretty limited definition. Second-price auctions are awesome in cases where there are more bidders than supply, and the supplier isn’t trying to maximize their revenue (or is prevented from using less-transparent differential pricing). Even then, it’s only strategy-proof in the one-shot case. If there will be future auctions or negotiations, the incentive to hide one’s price-sensitivity returns.
I also react very badly to a teaser post, framed as a question. AT LEAST set up the bargaining scenario (who’s trading for what kinds of things, with what substitutability, quality knowledge imbalances, and repeatability of transaction).
edit: a “teaser post” is one which says “I have a clever/useful/interesting idea, but I’m not going to explain it yet, just make some vague claims about it.” Not only is it annoying, it almost NEVER results in an actually interesting explanatory post.
Thanks for the edit. It wasn’t my intention to “tease” people; my idea isn’t the focus of this post, I’m hoping other people will suggest better ones. I just wanted to mention that I had an idea as a way of showing that there exist plausible solutions, and to signal that I had put some thought into it myself and wasn’t just “asking people to do my homework” as it were.
This isn’t downvoted as I expected, so maybe I’m overreacting. I don’t find the setup clear enough to answer (mixing very different aspects of discovery and price-setting, switching from auction to very-low-volume assymetric-information transactions, confusing theory of incentive-compatibility and strategy-proofness with the practical annoyance of car salesman tactics). But maybe it’s just me—I look forward to your actual post that explains which aspects of things your idea addresses, and how.
It’s worth acknowledging that “stragegy-proof” is a pretty limited definition. Second-price auctions are awesome in cases where there are more bidders than supply, and the supplier isn’t trying to maximize their revenue (or is prevented from using less-transparent differential pricing). Even then, it’s only strategy-proof in the one-shot case. If there will be future auctions or negotiations, the incentive to hide one’s price-sensitivity returns.
I also react very badly to a teaser post, framed as a question. AT LEAST set up the bargaining scenario (who’s trading for what kinds of things, with what substitutability, quality knowledge imbalances, and repeatability of transaction).
edit: a “teaser post” is one which says “I have a clever/useful/interesting idea, but I’m not going to explain it yet, just make some vague claims about it.” Not only is it annoying, it almost NEVER results in an actually interesting explanatory post.
What do you mean by a “teaser post”?
Thanks for the edit. It wasn’t my intention to “tease” people; my idea isn’t the focus of this post, I’m hoping other people will suggest better ones. I just wanted to mention that I had an idea as a way of showing that there exist plausible solutions, and to signal that I had put some thought into it myself and wasn’t just “asking people to do my homework” as it were.
This isn’t downvoted as I expected, so maybe I’m overreacting. I don’t find the setup clear enough to answer (mixing very different aspects of discovery and price-setting, switching from auction to very-low-volume assymetric-information transactions, confusing theory of incentive-compatibility and strategy-proofness with the practical annoyance of car salesman tactics). But maybe it’s just me—I look forward to your actual post that explains which aspects of things your idea addresses, and how.
Here’s the post, hopefully that explains what I was thinking about.