Uncommon Knowledge in Multiparty Auctions

The pure strategy Nash equilibrium (PSNE) solution to multiparty auctions makes the strong but unrealistic assumption that all participants share the same beliefs about the type distributions of the others, and that all know that this information is mutually known. This paper proposes two alternative analyses of such auction problems that do not make that presupposition. The first is based on a solution concept similar to the PSNE. The second is employs the level k thinking solution concept.