136 research outputs found

    The Dutch DCS-1800 auction.

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    The Dutch DCS-1800 Auction

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    In February 1998 the Dutch government auctioned licences to operate mobile telecommunications networks according to the DCS-1800 technology. Two “national” licences and sixteen “regional” ones were auctioned by using a variant of the simultaneous, multiple round auction that was proposed by US-economists and that had been tested in the US. This paper describes how the decision to auction came about, it details the auction rules, and it analyzes the resulting outcomes.Telecommunications;Auctions;Regulation

    Essays in Pro-social Behavior

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    This dissertation examines individuals\u27 actions to improve social outcomes when unrecoverable investments are necessary. Situations involving non-pecuniary and pecuniary investments are considered. In the former, the prerequisite of real effort - a non-pecuniary, unrecoverable investment - is examined when said effort determines an individual\u27s ability to procure their preferred social outcome. Theoretical predictions over an individual\u27s effort provision are based on their revealed preferences for the social distribution of wealth according to the general axiom of revealed preference (GARP). Laboratory experiments reveal that individuals\u27 effort provisions do not support the assumption of stable preferences (transitivity) of wealth distribution. Specifically, individuals who reveal a preference for egalitarian outcomes do not exert enough real effort toward said outcomes when all of the wealth can be distributed directly to them. In the latter, pecuniary situation, auction formats that require all bidders to pay their bid (i.e., all-pay auctions) are studied as a way of funding public goods, specifically in the context of charity auctions. An innovative theoretical variation of the war of attrition is designed. This variation requires bidders to make unrecoverable upfront investments in the auction in order to participate, and the amount of one\u27s investment dictates how much one can potentially bid in the auction. In addition, an empirical analysis of this theoretical variation is provided via laboratory experiments. These experiments seek to highlight the bidder-specific and mechanism-specific characteristics that may lead to greater success in charitable fund-raising. The results suggest that auction mechanisms with an incremental bidding design outperform mechanisms with a lump-sum bidding design

    The Dutch DCS-1800 Auction

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    also benefitted from discussions during conferences in Mannheim (ESA), Barcelona (Spanis

    Revenue Comparisons for Auctions When Bidders Have Arbitrary Types

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    This paper develops a methodology for characterizing expected revenue from auctions in which bidders' types come from an arbitrary distribution. In particular, types may be multidimensional, and there may be mass points in the distribution. One application extends existing revenue equivalence results. Another application shows that first-price auctions yield higher expected revenue than second-price auctions when bidders are risk averse and/or face financial constraints. This revenue ranking also extends to risk-averse bidders with general forms of non-expected utility preferences.

    The auction of DCS-1800 licences

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    The auction of DCS-1800 licences

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    Essays in auction theory

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    Auction theory is a branch of game theory that considers human behavior in auction markets and the ensuing market outcomes. It is also successfully used as a tool to design real-life auctions. This thesis contains five essays addressing a variety of topics within the realm of auction theory. The first essay gives an easily accessible overview of the most important insights of auction theory. The second essay, motivated by the UMTS-auctions that took place in Europe, studies auctions in which, in contrast to standard auction theory, losing bidders benefit from a high price paid by the winner(s). Under this assumption, the first-price sealed-bid auction and the second-price sealed-bid auction are no longer revenue equivalent. The third essay analyzes how well different kinds of auctions are able to raise money for charity. It turns out that standard winner-pay auctions are inept fund-raising mechanisms because of the positive externality bidders forgo if they top another’s high bid. As this problem does not occur in all-pay auctions, where bidders pay irrespective of whether they win or lose, all-pay auctions are more effective in raising money. The fourth essay studies a particular auction type, a so-called simultaneous pooled auction with multiple bids and preference lists, that has been used for example in the Netherlands and Ireland to auction available spectrum. The results in this essay show that this type of auction does not satisfy elementary desirable properties such as the existence of an efficient equilibrium. The fifth essay argues that inefficient auction outcomes due to strong negative (informational) externalities (created by post-auction interactions) can be avoided by asking bidders prior to the auction to submit any publicly observable payment they would like to make.

    Why Every Economist Should Learn Some Auction Theory

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    This is an Invited paper for the World Congress of the Econometric Society held in Seattle in August 2000. We discuss the strong connections between auction theory and "standard" economic theory, and argue that auction-theoretic tools and intuitions can provide useful arguments and insights in a broad range of mainstream economic settings that do not, at first sight, look like auctions. We also discuss some more obvious applications, especially to industrial organization.Auctions, Bidding, Auction Theory, Private Values, Common Values, Mechanism Design, Litigation, Stock Markets, Queues, Financial Crashes, Brand Loyalty, War of Attrition, Bertrand, Perfect Competition, E-Commerce, Spectrum Auctions, Treasury Auctions, Electricity
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