Robust Auction Design with Support Information

Abstract

A seller wants to sell an item to n buyers. Buyer valuations are drawn i.i.d. from a distribution unknown to the seller; the seller only knows that the support is included in [a, b]. To be
robust, the seller chooses a DSIC mechanism that optimizes the worst-case performance relative
to the first-best benchmark. Our analysis unifies the regret and the ratio objectives.

For these objectives, we derive an optimal mechanism and the corresponding performance
in quasi-closed form, as a function of the support information [a, b] and the number of buyers n. Our
analysis reveals three regimes of support information and a new class of robust mechanisms.
i.) When a/b is below a threshold, the optimal mechanism is a second-price auction (SPA)
with random reserve, a focal class in earlier literature. ii.) When a/b is above another threshold,
SPAs are strictly suboptimal, and an optimal mechanism belongs to a class of mechanisms
we introduce, which we call pooling auctions (POOL); whenever the highest value is above a
threshold, the mechanism still allocates to the highest bidder, but otherwise the mechanism
allocates to a uniformly random buyer, i.e., pools low types. iii.) When a/b is between two thresholds, a randomization between SPA and POOL is optimal.

We also characterize optimal mechanisms within nested central subclasses of mechanisms:
standard mechanisms that only allocate to the highest bidder, SPA with random reserve, and
SPA with no reserve. We show strict separations in terms of performance across classes, implying
that deviating from standard mechanisms is necessary for robustness.

Keywords: robust mechanism design, minimax regret, maximin ratio, support information, prior-independent, standard mechanisms, second-price auctions, pooling