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Zero Profit at Every Bid, Because Winning Says the Firm Was Cheap

Acceptance restricts the value to below your bid, where a uniform variable averages half of it, and doubling half your bid returns exactly your bid. The expected profit is therefore identically zero at every bid up to 100 and 100 minus b above it, so there is no optimal bid to find. With a general multiplier the profit is b squared times k minus 2, over 200, making doubling the exact break-even multiple, and the article shows a value distribution starting at 50 where the same bidder profits.

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