23 research outputs found
The Role of Auctions in Allocating Public Resources
This paper provides an economic framework within which to consider the effectiveness and limitations of auction markets. The paper looks at the use of auctions as a policy instrument and the effects of auction design on consumer interests, the efficient allocation of resources, and industry competitiveness.Australia; Research; Ascending-bid auction; Auctions; Bidders; Conservation funds; Descending-bid auction; Dutch auction; English auction; Environmental Management; First-price sealed-bid auction; Infrastructure; Markets; Oral auction; Outcry auction; Pollutant emission permits; Power supply contracts; Public resources; Radio- spectrum; Second-price sealed-bid auction Spectrum licences; Vickrey auction; Water rights;
Online Auctions
The economic literature on online auctions is rapidly growing because of the enormous amount of freely available field data. Moreover, numerous innovations in auction-design features on platforms such as eBay have created excellent research opportunities. In this article, we survey the theoretical, empirical, and experimental research on bidder strategies (including the timing of bids and winner's-curse effects) and seller strategies (including reserve-price policies and the use of buy-now options) in online auctions, as well as some of the literature dealing with online-auction design (including stopping rules and multi-object pricing rules).
Money Out of Thin Air: The Nationwide Narrowband PCS Auction
The Federal Communications Commission held its first auction of radio spectrum at the Nationwide Narrowband PCS Auction in July 1994. The simultaneous multiple-round auction, which lasted five days, was an ascending bid auction in which all licenses were offered simultaneously. This paper describes the auction rules and how bidders prepared for the auction. The full history of bidding is presented. Several questions for auction theory are discussed. In the end, the government collected $617 million for ten licenses. The auction was viewed by all as a huge success-an excellent example of bringing economic theory to bear on practical problems of allocating scarce resources.Auctions; Spectrum Auctions; Multiple-Round Auction
Composable and Efficient Mechanisms
We initiate the study of efficient mechanism design with guaranteed good
properties even when players participate in multiple different mechanisms
simultaneously or sequentially. We define the class of smooth mechanisms,
related to smooth games defined by Roughgarden, that can be thought of as
mechanisms that generate approximately market clearing prices. We show that
smooth mechanisms result in high quality outcome in equilibrium both in the
full information setting and in the Bayesian setting with uncertainty about
participants, as well as in learning outcomes. Our main result is to show that
such mechanisms compose well: smoothness locally at each mechanism implies
efficiency globally.
For mechanisms where good performance requires that bidders do not bid above
their value, we identify the notion of a weakly smooth mechanism. Weakly smooth
mechanisms, such as the Vickrey auction, are approximately efficient under the
no-overbidding assumption. Similar to smooth mechanisms, weakly smooth
mechanisms behave well in composition, and have high quality outcome in
equilibrium (assuming no overbidding) both in the full information setting and
in the Bayesian setting, as well as in learning outcomes.
In most of the paper we assume participants have quasi-linear valuations. We
also extend some of our results to settings where participants have budget
constraints
Structural Econometric Methods in Auctions: A Guide to the Literature
Auction models have proved to be attractive to structural econometricians who, since the late 1980s, have made substantial progress in identifying and estimating these rich game-theoretic models of bidder behavior. We provide a guide to the literature in which we contrast the various informational structures (paradigms) commonly assumed by researchers and uncover the evolution of the eld. We highlight major contributions within each paradigm and benchmark modi cations and extensions to these core models. Lastly, we discuss special topics that have received substantial attention among auction researchers in recent years, including auctions formultiple objects, auctions with risk averse bidders, testing between common and private value paradigms, unobserved auction-speci c heterogeneity, and accounting for an unobserved number of bidders as well as endogenous entry
Bidding Markets
The existence of a âbidding marketâ is commonly cited as a reason to tolerate the creation or maintenance of highly concentrated markets. We discuss three erroneous arguments to that effect: the âconsultantsâ fallacyâ that âmarket power is impossibleâ, the âacademicsâ fallacyâ that (often) âmarket power does not matterâ, and the âregulatorsâ fallacyâ that âintervention against pernicious market power is unnecessaryâ, in markets characterized by auctions or bidding processes. Furthermore we argue that the term âbidding marketâ as it is widely used in antitrust is unhelpful or misleading. Auctions and bidding processes do have some special featuresâincluding their price formation processes, common-values behaviour, and bid-taker powerâbut the significance of these features has been overemphasized, and they often imply a need for stricter rather than more lenient competition policy.Bidding Markets, Auctions, Antitrust, Competition Policy, Bidding, Market Power, Private Values, Common Values, Anti-trust
Structural Econometric Methods in Auctions: A Guide to the Literature
Auction models have proved to be attractive to structural econometricians who, since the late 1980s, have made substantial progress in identifying and estimating these rich game-theoretic models of bidder behavior. We provide a guide to the literature in which we contrast the various informational structures (paradigms) commonly assumed by researchers and uncover the evolution of the eld. We highlight major contributions within each paradigm and benchmark modi cations and extensions to these core models. Lastly, we discuss special topics that have received substantial attention among auction researchers in recent years, including auctions formultiple objects, auctions with risk averse bidders, testing between common and private value paradigms, unobserved auction-speci c heterogeneity, and accounting for an unobserved number of bidders as well as endogenous entry
Large-scale Multi-item Auctions : Evidence from Multimedia-supported Experiments
This book presents two experimental studies that deal with the comparison of multi-item auction designs for two specific applications: the sale of 2.6 GHz radio spectrum rights in Europe, and the sale of emissions permits in Australia. In order to tackle the complexity of these experiments, a cognitively based toolkit is proposed, including modularized video instructions, comprehension tests, a learning platform, a graphical one-screen user interface, and comprehension-based group matching