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Discussion Paper

The Effect of Bidders’ Asymmetries on Expected Revenue in Auctions

Bidders’ asymmetries are widespread in auction markets. Yet, their impact on behavior and, ultimately, revenue and profits is still not well understood. In this paper, I define a natural benchmark auction environment to which to compare any private value auction with asymmetrically distributed valuations. I show that the expected revenue from the benchmark auction always dominates that from the asymmetric auction, both in the first price auction and the second price auction.