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CERGE-EI invites all interested in chess to the Bank Chess Festival organized by the Prague Chess Society and hosted by the Czech National Bank (CNB) and CERGE-EI. The festival will take place in two beautiful venues: the building of CNB (28 - 30 November) and then continuing in CERGE-EI’s Schebek Palace (1 - 3 December).

Don’t miss the opportunity to play simultaneous chess games with world famous grandmasters, including the best Czech chess player David Navara, the legendary Czech-German grandmaster Vlastimil Hort, a world top-ten player in the mid-1970’s, and Sergei Movsesian, a member of the gold medal-winning Armenian team at the 2011 World Team Chess Championship. In addition, blitz, rapid, and Fischer chess tournaments will be open for chess players of any level.

If you would like to participate as a member of the CERGE-EI team, register here.

Nina Bobkova

Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE), University of Bonn, Germany

Author: Nina Bobkova

Abstract: The valuation of bidders for an object consists of a common value component (which matters to all bidders) and a private value component (which is relevant only to themselves). Bidders choose about which of the two components they want to acquire noisy information.  Learning about the private component yields independent estimates, whereas learning about the common component leads to correlated information between the bidders. I show that in a second price auction, reducing correlation guarantees a bidder the same expected gain for a strictly lower payment. Information selection in equilibrium is unique: bidders only learn about their private component in the second-price auction.  Thus, an independent private value framework arises endogenously. In an all-pay auction, bidders also prefer information about the private component. In a first price auction, increasing correlation strictly elevates the payoff for a bidder under certain conditions. 

Full Text:  “Knowing What Matters to Others: Information Selection in Auctions”