The role of information in auctions

Abstract

This review discusses the seminal contributions of Engelbrecht-Wiggans et al. (1983) Milgrom and Weber (1982a) to the literature that studies the role of information in auctions. We describe the results in these papers and present several extensions. Much of the earlier literature on auctions takes the information environment as exogenous. The extensions that we present will demonstrate how the insights of Engelbrecht-Wiggans et al. (1983) and Milgrom and Weber (1982a) apply to the more recent literature on flexible information acquisition in auctions where the information structure is endogenously determined in equilibrium.