4.4 Resale and Efficiency 59
CHAPTER NOTES
The result that with symmetric risk-averse bidders the revenue from the first-
price auction is greater than that in a second-price auction is due to Holt (1980),
who studied the analogous problem in the context of bidding for procurement
contracts. The key to Proposition 4.1, of course, is the fact that in a first-price
auction, risk aversion causes bidders to increase their bids. The result that CARA
bidders are indifferent between the first- and second-price auctions is due to
Matthews (1987).
The material on auctions with budget constraints is based on Che and Gale
(1998). This paper provides a sufficient condition on the primitives that guar-
antees that the first-price auction has an equilibrium of the sort ...