Cued to Queue: Information in Waiting-Line Auctions

Abstract

We study the effect of providing information to agents who queue before a scarce good is distributed at a fixed time. Many information policies reveal "sudden bad news," when agents learn the queue is longer than previously believed. Sudden bad news causes assortative inefficiency by prompting multiple agents to simultaneously join the queue. If the value distribution has an increasing (decreasing) hazard rate, information policies that release sudden bad news increase (decrease) total surplus, relative to releasing no information. If agents incur entry costs and the hazard rate is decreasing, the optimal policy reveals only when the queue is full.