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Competing intermediary auctions

Bidders' selection of an auction is important in the study of competing auctioneers. However, in a variety of settings, such as in the spot pricing of online display advertisements, bidders, represented by autonomous agents, are not allowed to bid directly but only via specialized intermediaries. Motivated by the emergence of these markets, we analyze a scenario where a single indivisible good is auctioned at a central seller via two intermediary auctions. We study, for the first time, the selection problem faced by the buyers who have to decide in which intermediary auction to bid after observing the set reserve prices. We find that, when the reserve prices of the intermediaries are sufficiently different, the unique pure-strategy equilibrium is for all buyers to select the low-reserve intermediary. When this is not the case, the equilibrium strategy depends on the valuation of the buyers and consists of three intervals. In this unique equilibrium, buyers in the low-valuation interval always choose the low-reserve intermediary. Buyers in the middle interval follow a strictly mixed strategy. Finally, the strategy of the buyers in the high-valuation interval is for all of them to go to either the high-reserve intermediary, or the low-reserve one, but not both.