Long-Lived Private Information and Imperfect Competition

Abstract

We develop a multi-period auction model in which multiple privately informed agents strategically exploit their long-lived information. We show that such traders compete aggressively and cause most of their common private information to be revealed very rapidly. In the limit as the interval between auctions approaches zero, market depth becomes infinite and all private information is revealed immediately. These results are in contrast to those ofKyle (1985)in which the monopolistic informed trader causes his information to be incorporated into prices gradually, and, when the interval between auctions is vanishingly small, market depth is constant over time.