Asymmetric English Auctions

This paper studies equilibria of the n-bidder single-object English, or open ascending price, auction in a setting with interdependent values and asymmetric bidders. Maskin (in: H. Siebert (Ed.), Privatization, Institut fur Weltwirtschaften der Universita¨ t Kiel, Kiel, 1992,pp. 115–136.) showed that if the values satisfy a ‘‘single crossing’’ condition, then the two bidder English auction has an efficient equilibrium. In this paper, two extensions of the single crossing condition, the ‘‘average crossing’’ condition and the ‘‘cyclical crossing’’ condition, are introduced. The main result is that under either of these conditions the n-bidder English auction has an efficient equilibrium.