Cued to Queue: Information in Waiting-Line Auctions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hirsch, Jack, Tang, Eric
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hirsch, Jack
Tang, Eric
author_facet Hirsch, Jack
Tang, Eric
contents We study the effect of providing information to agents who queue before a scarce good is distributed at a fixed time. Many information policies reveal "sudden bad news," when agents learn the queue is longer than previously believed. Sudden bad news causes assortative inefficiency by prompting multiple agents to simultaneously join the queue. If the value distribution has an increasing (decreasing) hazard rate, information policies that release sudden bad news increase (decrease) total surplus, relative to releasing no information. If agents incur entry costs and the hazard rate is decreasing, the optimal policy reveals only when the queue is full.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_19553
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cued to Queue: Information in Waiting-Line Auctions
Hirsch, Jack
Tang, Eric
Theoretical Economics
Computer Science and Game Theory
We study the effect of providing information to agents who queue before a scarce good is distributed at a fixed time. Many information policies reveal "sudden bad news," when agents learn the queue is longer than previously believed. Sudden bad news causes assortative inefficiency by prompting multiple agents to simultaneously join the queue. If the value distribution has an increasing (decreasing) hazard rate, information policies that release sudden bad news increase (decrease) total surplus, relative to releasing no information. If agents incur entry costs and the hazard rate is decreasing, the optimal policy reveals only when the queue is full.
title Cued to Queue: Information in Waiting-Line Auctions
topic Theoretical Economics
Computer Science and Game Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.19553