Department of Theoretical Economics Research Seminar with Pasha Andreyanov, HSE

Dear colleagues,  

Department of Theoretical Economics invites you to attend the research seminar with Pasha Andreyanov, HSE

Date: November 11, 2025
Time: 1:00 p.m.
Working language: English
Speaker: Pasha Andreyanov, Assistant Professor, Department of Theoretical Economics

     The link to the seminar: https://telemost.360.yandex.ru/j/1475450745

Title: Auctions after Actions

Abstract: When allocating a single item between two symmetric agents who can take value-enhancing actions prior to the mechanism, symmetric auctions need not be optimal. We characterize optimal mechanisms through a non-decreasing frontier and a rectangular exclusion set in the space of agents’ types. In the case of additively separable consumption utility, we obtain a novel closed-form characterization of the frontier, by relating it to the solution of a standard monotonicity constrained optimization problem. Beyond this case, the frontier can take arbitrary forms, and any exclusion can be optimal, despite the symmetry of agents. Finally, we provide sufficient conditions for the optimal mechanism to be symmetric in both the frontier and the exclusion set. Our results refine and extend the analysis of Zhang (2017) and Gershkov et al. (2021).