Procurement auctions with avoidable fixed costs: an experimental approach

Bidders in procurement auctions often face avoidable fixed costs. This can make bidding decisions complex and risky, and market outcomes volatile. If bidders deviate from risk neutral best responses, either due to faulty optimization or risk attitudes, then equilibrium predictions can perform poorly. In this paper, we confront laboratory bidders with three auction formats that make bidding difficult and risky in different ways. We find that measures of `difficulty' provide a consistent explanation of deviations from best response bidding across the three formats. In contrast, risk and loss preferences cannot explain behavior across all three formats.Auctions; Experimental; Procurement; Synergies; Asymmetric Bidders; Learning; Optimization errors

Why did British Electricity Prices Fall after 1998?

In an attempt to reduce high electricity prices in England and Wales the government has reduced concentration among generators and introduced New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA). Econometric analysis on monthly data from April 1996 to September 2002 implies support for two conflicting hypotheses. On a static view, increases in competition and the capacity margin were chiefly responsible for the fall in prices. If generators had been tacitly colluding before NETA, however, the impending change in market rules might have changed their behaviour a few months before the abolition of the Pool. That view implies that NETA reduced prices

Why did British electricity prices fall after 1998?

In an attempt to reduce high electricity prices in England and Wales the government has tried to encourage an increase in generation capacity, introduced a more competitive market structure and changed the market rules. Our econometric analysis on monthly data from April 1996 to March 2002 implies support for two conflicting hypotheses. On a static view, increases in competition and the capacity margin were responsible for the fall in prices, while changes in the trading rules had little impact. If generators had been tacitly colluding before NETA, however, the impending change in market rules might have changed their behaviour a few months before the abolition of the Pool. Regressions representing this hypothesis imply that NETA was responsible for a significant part of the reductions in prices after 1998

Why did British electricity prices fall after 1998?

In an attempt to reduce high electricity prices in England and Wales the government has reduced concentration among generators and introduced New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA). Econometric analysis on monthly data from April 1996 to September 2002 implies support for two conflicting hypotheses. On a static view, increases in competition and the capacity margin were chiefly responsible for the fall in prices. If generators had been tacitly colluding before NETA, however, the impending change in market rules might have changed their behaviour a few months before the abolition of the Pool. That view implies that NETA reduced prices.electricity, market power, concentration, market rules

Why did British Electricity Prices Fall after 1998?

In an attempt to reduce high electricity prices in England and Wales the government has reduced concentration among generators and introduced New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA). Econometric analysis on monthly data from April 1996 to September 2002 implies support for two conflicting hypotheses. On a static view, increases in competition and the capacity margin were chiefly responsible for the fall in prices. If generators had been tacitly colluding before NETA, however, the impending change in market rules might have changed their behaviour a few months before the abolition of the Pool. That view implies that NETA reduced prices.Electricity, market power, concentration, market rules

Procurement auctions with avoidable fixed costs: an experimental approach

Bidders in procurement auctions often face avoidable fixed costs. This can make bidding decisions complex and risky, and market outcomes volatile. If bidders deviate from risk neutral best responses, either due to faulty optimization or risk attitudes, then equilibrium predictions can perform poorly. In this paper, we confront laboratory bidders with three auction formats that make bidding difficult and risky in different ways. We find that measures of `difficulty' provide a consistent explanation of deviations from best response bidding across the three formats. In contrast, risk and loss preferences cannot explain behavior across all three formats

07271 Abstracts Collection -- Computational Social Systems and the Internet

From 01.07. to 06.07.2007, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07271 ``Computational Social Systems and the Internet\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

The economics of London bus tendering.

Following a period of rising costs, competitive tendering was introduced to the London bus industry in 1984. This thesis is an economic analysis of the impact of tendering on London bus services. Chapter 1 states the aims and objectives of the thesis in the context of the economics literature. The chapter is divided into two sections. In section 1 the literature is drawn upon to provide an economic interpretation of the state of the London bus industry prior to the introduction of tendering, and to provide an economic context for the introduction of tendering. In section 2 literature relating to the design of a tendering process is summarised. The focus is on the auction aspect of the tendering process and some important dimensions of contract specification. The impact of tendering on costs is analysed in chapter 2. Three questions are asked: What is the cost structure of the competitive London bus industry. Is there any evidence of strategic bidding behaviour as predicted by the auction theory literature. What level of cost saving can be attributed to tendering. The analysis is based on the full set of bid data from London bus tendering over the period 1985-1993 and is econometric in nature. The results are: there is no statistically significant difference in costs of operation between public and private sector operators under competition; bidding behaviour conforms to some features predicted by theoretical models; the estimated cost saving from tendering is 20%. Chapter 3 evaluates the impact of tendering on the demand for bus travel in London. The relationship between demand and service quality is estimated, gains to tendering are attributed in accordance with the increased service quality due to tendering. A statistically significant relationship between demand and service quality is found. The lowest estimate of revenue gained due to tendering is 9.6 million over the period 1987-1992 in 1992 prices. Chapter 4 estimates the welfare gain due to tendering, defined as the sum of changes in producer and consumer surplus due to tendering. The estimated welfare gain due to tendering is between 90 and 380 million over the period 1987-1992 in 1992 prices. An appendix to this chapter analyses the relationship between welfare and the type of contract upon which tendering is based. It is argued that a cost contract is preferable to a bottom line contract. Chapter 5 is based on an in depth series of interviews with key actors in the London bus industry. The aim here was to find out things that cannot be inferred from the data. Areas discussed include: the extent to which tendering as opposed to other factors led to change in the London bus industry; the source of cost savings; the impact of tendering on Labour; problems associated with tendering. Interviews suggested that: cost savings stemmed from wage reductions and productivity gains; there are some problems with the bidding process; there is a tension between bus planners and some bus company managers. In certain cases the tendering authority offered contract for tender in bundles. Chapter 6 analyses this policy from theoretical and empirical perspectives and asks was it optimal for the tendering authority. It is concluded that the policy should not be used by London Transport. Finally, in chapter 7, an overall assessment of the tendering process is presented. The focus is on results and policy implications for bus tendering in London and competitive tendering in general

The veil of experimental currency units

It is common practice to have subjects make decisions which pay out in a fictitious experimental currency. Earnings in the experimental currency are then converted to cash at the end of the experiment. Like many practices in experimental economics, however, these procedural choices seems to be driven more by habit or tradition than by empirical evidence that more desirable outcomes are produced. In this paper, we report the results of an induced value experiment in which we manipulated the exchange rate between the experimental currency and cash. We find virtually no relationship between a stronger/weaker experimental currency and the ability of theory to predict observed outcomes. The only significant effect that was generated relates to the comparison of the cash-only condition to the 1-to-1 exchange condition, with the latter producing greater behavioral deviations from theoretical predictions. The results suggest that experimenters might be able to spread scarce research dollars over more subjects by using weaker experimental currency but using a 1-to-1 conversion between the experimental currency and cash might, in the words of Davis and Holt (1993), "create an artificial 'game-board' sense of speculative competitiveness.

Bankruptcy’s Uneasy Shift to a Contract Paradigm

The most dramatic development in twenty-first century bankruptcy practice has been the increasing use of contracts to shape the bankruptcy process. To explain the new contract paradigm—our principal objective in this Article-- we begin by examining the structure of current bankruptcy law. Although the Bankruptcy Code of 1978 has long been viewed as mandatory, its voting and cramdown rules, among others, invite considerable contracting. The emerging paradigm is asymmetric, however. While the Code and bankruptcy practice allow for ex post contracting, ex ante contracts are viewed with suspicion.We next use contract theory to assess the two modes of contracting. The principal benefit of ex post contracting stems from the parties’ inability to anticipate each possible future contingency. Whereas an ex ante contract faces the challenge of providing for many possible future states of the world, an ex post contract can provide for the one that materialized. Ex ante contracting also provides distinct benefits, however, even if it is incomplete. It can encourage reliance on investments by the parties, efficiently allocates risk, and establishes incentives. Given time-inconsistent preferences of the parties, the prospect of ex post contracting can prevent the parties from exploiting these benefits. Contract theory has shown that it is difficult in practice for parties to prevent renegotiation or otherwise avoid this outcome.We apply these insights to a number of key areas of current bankruptcy contracting including: the ex post contracts facilitated by the voting and confirmation rules of the Code itself; the use (and contrasting judicial treatment) of intercreditor and restructuring support agreements to contract around ostensibly mandatory Chapter 11 provisions; and substantive consolidation of the cases of a debtor and its affiliates. Even if all of the relevant parties consent, an ex post renegotiation may be inefficient if it undermines the parties’ ex ante arrangements. Yet, bankruptcy encourages such ex post contracting while discouraging ex ante attempts to avoid this outcome. We conclude that courts are too hostile to ex ante contracting, and they should subject ex post contracts to more careful review