Calendar mechanisms

Hinnosaar, Toomas

Abstract

I study the dynamic mechanism design problem of a monopolist selling a fixed number of service slots to randomly arriving, short-lived buyers with heterogeneous values. The fully optimal mechanism is a non-standard auction in which bidders' payoffs are non-monotone in their opponents' bids. Because its complexity may make the fully optimal mechanism too costly to implement, I also study the optimal mechanisms in restricted classes. The most restrictive are pure calendar mechanisms, which allocate service dates instead of contingent contracts. The optimal pure calendar mechanism is characterized by the opportunity costs of service slots and is implementable with a simple mechanism.

Citation

Hinnosaar, T. (2017). Calendar mechanisms. Games and Economic Behavior, 104, 252-270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2017.04.004

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 17, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Apr 26, 2020
• Publication Date: 2017-07
• Deposit Date: Jun 22, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 22, 2020
• Journal: Games and Economic Behavior
• Print ISSN: 0899-8256
• Electronic ISSN: 1090-2473
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 104
• Pages: 252-270
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2017.04.004
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4699301
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0899825617300684
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Calendar mechanisms; Journal Title: Games and Economic Behavior; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2017.04.004; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.