An Experimental Analysis of Parallel Multiple Auctions

At online auction platforms we often observed that substitutable goods are auctioned concurrently with auctions ending at the same time. I introduce an experimental setup of three sellers and four buyers in an ascending second price auction environment where every seller runs one auction with a homogeneous good and the buyers are confronted with single unit demand. I find that sellers revenue is significantly lower than theory predicts due to the fact that some auctions did not receive bids whereas other auctions concentrated the bids of all bidders. Moreover, I observe a statistically higher revenue of sellers setting the minimum starting price. Furthermore, my study shows that the buyers submit bids which are significantly lower than the private valuation every buyer receives. Comparing the efficiency of the parallel multiple auction setup to a double auction control experiment, I find a significant lower efficiency in parallel multiple auctions due to the coordination failure of the buyers.simultaneous auctions, internet auctions, market design, electronic business

Just a small delay? Bidding Behavior and Efficiency in overlapping multiple auctions

Online auction platforms like eBay provide a wide range of auctions containing substitutable goods. Some of these auctions exhibit parallel elements which means that two or more auctions run side by side for a certain time. Experiments have shown that multiple auctions ending at the same time, result in significantly lower efficiency due to the coordination failure of the buyers. I introduce an experimental setup with three sellers and four buyers in an overlapping multiple second price auction environment, where every seller runs one auction with a homogeneous good and the buyers are confronted with single unit demand. Furthermore, I vary the degree of the overlap between the successive auctions. One main result is that sellers revenue is significantly higher in overlapping multiple auctions than in parallel multiple auctions. Moreover, I observe a lower coordination failure of the buyers in overlapping auctions than in parallel multiple auctions. Due to these results, efficiency in overlapping multiple auctions is higher compared to the efficiency in parallel multiple auctions.internet auctions, cross bidding, market design, electronic business

Simultaneous Ascending Auction

The simultaneous ascending auction has proved to be a successful method of auctioning many related items. Simultaneous sale and ascending bids enable price discovery, which helps bidders build desirable packages of items. Although package bids are not allowed, the auction format does handle mild complementarities well. I examine the auction design and its performance in practice.Auctions, Ascending Auctions, Market Design

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

Spectrum Auctions

Auctions have emerged as the primary means of assigning spectrum licenses to companies wishing to provide wireless communication services. Since July 1994, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has conducted 33 spectrum auctions, assigning thousands of licenses to hundreds of firms. Countries throughout the world are conducting similar auctions. I review the current state of spectrum auctions. Both the design and performance of these auctions are addressed.Auctions, Spectrum Auctions, Multiple Item Auctions

Fast Iterative Combinatorial Auctions via Bayesian Learning

Iterative combinatorial auctions (CAs) are often used in multi-billion dollar domains like spectrum auctions, and speed of convergence is one of the crucial factors behind the choice of a specific design for practical applications. To achieve fast convergence, current CAs require careful tuning of the price update rule to balance convergence speed and allocative efficiency. Brero and Lahaie (2018) recently introduced a Bayesian iterative auction design for settings with single-minded bidders. The Bayesian approach allowed them to incorporate prior knowledge into the price update algorithm, reducing the number of rounds to convergence with minimal parameter tuning. In this paper, we generalize their work to settings with no restrictions on bidder valuations. We introduce a new Bayesian CA design for this general setting which uses Monte Carlo Expectation Maximization to update prices at each round of the auction. We evaluate our approach via simulations on CATS instances. Our results show that our Bayesian CA outperforms even a highly optimized benchmark in terms of clearing percentage and convergence speed.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, AAAI-1

Economic Efficiency Requires Interaction

We study the necessity of interaction between individuals for obtaining approximately efficient allocations. The role of interaction in markets has received significant attention in economic thinking, e.g. in Hayek's 1945 classic paper. We consider this problem in the framework of simultaneous communication complexity. We analyze the amount of simultaneous communication required for achieving an approximately efficient allocation. In particular, we consider two settings: combinatorial auctions with unit demand bidders (bipartite matching) and combinatorial auctions with subadditive bidders. For both settings we first show that non-interactive systems have enormous communication costs relative to interactive ones. On the other hand, we show that limited interaction enables us to find approximately efficient allocations

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;