Information design in optimal auctions (Q6072258)

In this article, the authors characterize the symmetric buyer-optimal information structure as well as the symmetric seller-worst information structure with symmetric binary priors and a Myersonian optimal auction. More precisely, the authors translate both information design problems into finite-dimensional, constrained optimization problems in which one can explicitly solve for the optimal information structure. It is show that with two or more buyers, the symmetric buyer-optimal information structure is different from the symmetric seller-worst information structure. Section 5 studies the information design problem with asymmetric signal distributions. Section 6 discusses issues with asymmetric or continuous priors and studies the ``maxmin'' mechanisms. Appendix A contains all proofs of the propositions.