Friday, April 25th at 4:00pm in Kerchof Hall 317 (pizza arrives at 3:45)
Speaker: Maxim Engers (UVa Economics)
Title: Charity Auctions

Abstract: The talk is about some results in auction theory. I will first present and discuss the classic revenue-equivalence result of Vickrey (as extended by Myerson). This provides conditions under which auctioning off an object in different ways would, on average, raise the same amount of revenue. I will then present some recent joint work with Brian McManus of Washington University which shows that this revenue equivalence no longer holds when the proceeds of the auction are viewed as a contribution to a worthy cause rather than as a payment to a for-profit enterprise. We rank various kinds of auction according to the revenue they can be expected to raise. If the auctioneer is able to extract fees by threatening to call off the auction, then the revenue equivalence of the different kinds of auctions can be restored provided the auctions are supplemented by revenue-maximizing entrance fees. The talk will not assume any prior knowledge of economics nor any math beyond calculus.