Precluding collusion in the Vickrey auction

Abstract

This paper studies collusion in one-shot auctions, where a buyer can bribe his competitors into lowering their bids. We modify the single-unit Vickrey auction to incite deviations from the designated-winner scenario and thus undermine collusion. The construction of mechanism does not require the knowledge of colluders´ identities or distributions of valuations, in which sense it is entirely detail-free.