A Note on Log Concave Survivor Functions in Auctions

In a standard English auction in which bidders’ valuations are independently drawn from a common distribution, a standard regularity condition is that the survivor function of the distribution be log concave. In an auction where the seller sets a fixed price, the equivalent condition requires log concavity of a survivor function derived from the primitive distribution. In this note we show that log concavity of the primitive survivor function implies log concavity in the derived functions. This result is of interest when studying on-line auctions that combined aspects of fixed-price and English auctions.English Auction; Log Concavity; Survivor Function

A Note on the Probability of Winning a Lottery when the Number of Competitors is a Binomial Random Variable

Consider a model in which a consumer faces a lottery with j other people for a prize, so that the probability of winning the prize is 1/(j+1). Now let j be a random variable, determined by the binomial distribution. Specifically, let there be n potential competitors for the consumer in the lottery, each with an independent probability of ? of being a competitor. In this note, we show how the resulting expression for the expected value of 1/(j+1) using binomial probabilities can be simplified by means of the binomial theorem.Binomial Distribution; Binomial Theorem; Lottery

The Fixed Price Offer Mechanism in Trade Me Online Auctions

The Fixed Price Offer (FPO) mechanism in Trade Me auctions allows sellers to make a take-it-or-leave-it offer at the conclusion of an unsuccessful auction. We investigate the effects of the FPO option on strategies and outcomes in independent-value auctions. The FPO option induces some bidders with a value above the seller’s reserve to wait for an FPO instead of bidding. Overall, the FPO option increases the probability of sale but reduces expected seller revenue compared to a standard auction. The impact of the FPO option is reduced when the number of bidders increases.fixed price offer; private value auction; on-line auction; optimal reserve price; second chance offer

Existence Advertising, Price Competition, and Asymmetric Market Structure

We examine a two stage duopoly game in which firms advertise their existence to consumers in stage 1 and compete in prices in stage 2. Whenever the advertising technology generates positive overlap in customer bases the equilib- rium for the stage 1 game is asymmetric in that one firm chooses to remain small in comparison to its competitor. For a specific random advertising technology we show that one firm will always be half as large as the other. No equilibrium in pure price strategies exists in the stage 2 game and as long as there is some overlap in customer bases the mixed strategy equilibrium is far from the Bertrand equilibrium.Existence advertising; price dispersion; Bertrand paradox; information; duopoly

Spam - solutions and their problems

We analyze the success of filtering as a solution to the spam problem when used alone or concurrently with sender and/or receiver pricing. We find that filters alone may exacerbate the spam problem if the spammer attempts to evade them by sending multiple variants of the message to each consumer. Sender and receiver prices can effectively reduce or eliminating spam, either on their own or when used together with filtering. Finally, we discuss the impli- cations for social welfare of using the different spam controls.Spam; filtering; email; receiver pricing; sender pricing

How to make sense of citizen expertise in participatory projects?

This article proposes a pragmatist theorising of different repertoires of valuation as an analytical grid to understand how actors of participatory projects assess the value of citizen expert participation. It conducts justification analysis on interview data from 21 projects that engage citizens as lay experts in Finland to illustrate how this analytical approach helps explain the contradicting meanings assigned to the concept as well as the resulting possibilities for participation. The article identifies two main conflicts in which different justifications for citizen expertise become explicit: debates over who can be a citizen expert and what the scope of their participation should be. Our results show how in the Finnish context, industrial justifications are often used to bolster claims for the right to participate. However, the industrial value-base is also the most reoccurring object of critique, suggested to create a narrow and above-defined role of a citizen-engineer for the citizen experts. The article illustrates how the diverse justifications might lead to contradicting constructions of citizen expertise, contributing to conflicting expectations, ambiguous and tokenistic participation, and feelings of exclusion among policy actors. It argues for justification analysis as a tool to identify and compare these undergirding valuations across policy fields and contexts.Peer reviewe

The advent of the citizen expert : Democratising or pushing the boundaries of expertise?

This contribution introduces Current Sociology's special subsection ‘The advent of the citizen expert. Democratising or pushing the boundaries of expertise?’, which deals with the increasing involvement of ‘ordinary citizens’ as experts into political and social debates. From an integrated perspective that transcends policy fields and societal realms, the special subsection deals with the epistemic and democratic implications of this transformation in civic participation and knowledge validation practice and pays special attention to the tensions that the 'double promise' associated with citizen expertise can imply. Three promising themes and research avenues are identified that the advent of the citizen expert highlights: The changes in liberal-democratic culture indicated by the emergence of this new actor category, the way societal power relations are impacted by the elevation of citizen expertise and the subsequently shifting boundaries and standards of what can count as knowledge or expertise.This contribution introduces Current Sociology's special subsection 'The advent of the citizen expert: Democratising or pushing the boundaries of expertise?', which deals with the increasing involvement of 'ordinary citizens' as experts into political and social debates. From an integrated perspective that transcends policy fields and societal realms, the special subsection deals with the epistemic and democratic implications of this transformation in civic participation and knowledge validation practice. It pays special attention to the tensions that can be implied by citizen expertise's 'double promise' of tapping into novel channels of participation and idle knowledge resources at the same time. Three promising themes and research avenues are identified that the advent of the citizen expert highlights: The changes in liberal-democratic culture indicated by the emergence of this new actor category, the way societal power relations are impacted by the elevation of citizen expertise and the subsequently shifting boundaries and standards of what can count as knowledge or expertise.Peer reviewe

The Impact of Agricultural Technology Adoption of Income Inequality in Rural China

This study analyzes the impact of government efforts to increase agricultural incomes on income inequality in rural China. It collects and analyzes survey data from 473 households in Yunnan, China in 2004. In particular, it investigates the effects of government efforts to promote improved upland rice technologies. Our analysis shows that farmers who adopted these technologies had incomes approximately 32 percent higher than non-adopters. While much of this came from increased incomes from the selling of upland rice, adopters also enjoyed higher incomes from other cash crops. We attribute this to technology spillovers. Despite substantial increases associated with the adoption of improved upland rice technologies, we estimate that the impact on income inequality was relatively slight. This is primarily due to the fact that low income farmers had relatively high rates of technology adoption.Rural economic development; Chinese economic development; upland rice; rural-urban income inequality; agricultural income policy

Snap-along ethnography : Studying visual politicization in the social media age

In this article, we argue that two significant shifts, namely, the blurring of lives offline and online and the increasing significance of the visual character of these lives, pose new challenges to social science research methods. We propose the application of snap-along ethnography to address these challenges. Snap-along ethnography is an ethnographic method with three core features: (1) participant observation conducted simultaneously offline and online, (2) a concomitant analytical focus on the act of taking, sharing, posting and commenting on images and the content of the images taken, and (3) a research design that builds on the participants’ own, spontaneous and self-originating actions of taking images. We illustrate the application and benefits of the method with examples from an ongoing research on young people’s visual forms of political action.In this article, we argue that two significant shifts, namely, the blurring of lives offline and online and the increasing significance of the visual character of these lives, pose new challenges to social science research methods. We propose the application of snap-along ethnography to address these challenges. Snap-along ethnography is an ethnographic method with three core features: 1) participant observation conducted simultaneously offline and online, 2) a concomitant analytical focus on the act of taking, sharing, posting and commenting on images and the content of the images taken, and 3) a research design that builds on the participants’ own, spontaneous and self-originating actions of taking images. We illustrate the application and benefits of the method with examples from an ongoing research on young people’s visual forms of political action.Peer reviewe