Does Auctioning of Entry Licences Affect Consumers Prices? An Experimental Study

On an increasing scale auctions are used to allocate the licenses to operate on markets which are thought not suited for free entry.According to standard economic arguments, the license fees paid at the auction will not affect consumer prices since they constitute a sunk cost.This standard view is not uncontested though.In the present paper we experimentally investigate two arguments for a potential upward effect of auctioning of prices: the incorporation of entry fees in prices due to the use of mark-up pricing rules, and the tendency of auctions to select the more collusive firms.Our results indicate that auctioning increases the probability of high prices, and that this is mainly due to the use of mark-up pricing rules.

Competitive Bidding in Auctions with Private and Common Values

The objects for sale in most auctions display both private and common value characteristics. This salient feature of many real-world auctions has not yet been incorporated into a strategic analysis of equilibrium bidding behavior. This paper reports such an analysis in the context of a stylized model in which bidders receive a private value signal and an independent common value signal. We show that more uncertainty about the common value results in lower efficiency and higher profits for the winning bidder. Information provided by the auctioneer decreases uncertainty, which improves efficiency and increases the seller's revenue. These positive effects of public information disclosure are stronger the more precise the information. Efficiency and revenues are also higher when more bidders enter the auction. Since our model nests both the private and common value case it may lead to an improved specification of empirical models of auctions.Auctions, inefficiencies, information disclosure, competition.

The Amsterdam Auction

Auctions used to sell houses often attract a diverse group of bidders, with realtors and speculators out for a bargain competing against buyers with a real interest in the house. Value asymmetries such as these necessitate careful consideration of the auction format as revenue equivalence cannot be expected to hold. From a theoretical viewpoint, Myerson's (1981) mechanism design approach has identified the seller's optimal choice. The proposed mechanism entails assigning credits to weaker bidders to promote competition and setting bidder-specific reserve prices. In practice, however, sellers often lack the detailed information needed to choose credits and reserve prices optimally, nor can they always discriminate among bidders. A more practical solution to the seller's problem is suggested by the "Amsterdam auction," where a premium is offered to encourage weak bidders to compete aggressively. This auction format, which has been used to sell houses in Amsterdam for centuries, treats all bidders the same and does not rely on detailed information about their value-distributions. In this paper, we consider premium auctions like the one in Amsterdam and demonstrate their revenue-generating virtues in asymmetric situations. We report the results of an experiment, which compares the standard first-price and English formats with two premium auctions in symmetric and asymmetric settings. The introduction of a premium leads weak bidders to set an endogenous reserve price for stronger rivals, with a dramatic effect on the sales price. Awarding a premium raises revenues, especially since Bertrand competition between weaker bidders virtually dissipates the premium to be paid.Auctions, experiments, asymmetries, premium

Investigation of local South African avipoxviruses as potential vaccine vectors

Includes bibliographical references.Avipoxviruses are large, genetically diverse DNA viruses which are particularly desirable for use as vaccine vectors as a result of their excellent safety profile and host range restriction. In this study, 8 novel South African (SA) avipoxvirus isolates were characterized. They could be divided into five groups, according to gross pathology and pock appearance on CAMs. Histopathology revealed distinct differences in epidermal and mesodermal cell proliferation, as well as immune cell infiltration, caused by the different avipoxviruses. Phylogenetic analysis was performed based on several conserved poxvirus genetic regions, corresponding to vaccinia virus (VACV) A3L (fpv167 locus, VACV P4b), G8R (fpv126 locus, VLTF-1), H3L (fpv140 locus, VACV H3L) and A11R–A12L (fpv175–176 locus). The SA isolates all grouped in clade A, either in subclade A2 or A3 of the genus Avipoxvirus, with branching patterns which differed according to the locus analysed

THE EFFECT OF VISUAL FEEDBACK ON VOICE ONSET TIME PRODUCTIONS BY L2 LEARNERS OF SPANISH

Research suggests that pronunciation instruction should be developed and taught in the second language classroom (Derwing & Munro, 2005; Elliott, 1997; Simões, 1996) in order to facilitate intelligible and comprehensible utterances in the L2 (Derwing & Munro, 1997). Although accentedness does not always create intelligibility issues, it can be the catalyst to negative native speaker perceptions of second language learners\u27 speech (Derwing & Munro, 2009). One distinctive marker of accent among native speakers of English and Spanish is the duration of aspiration values for the voiceless plosives /p/ /t/ /k/ (Lord, 2005). The present study proposes the use of visual feedback treatments to aid native speakers of American English in producing more target-like realizations of /p/ /t/ /k/ in Spanish. Generalizability between treatments was also measured in order to observe whether or not second language learners can apply their knowledge to non-focus phonemes, as well as from words in a carrier phrase to various, longer types of speech. Results conclude that the Experimental group improved significantly in each elicitation task from the Pre-test to the Post-test. Responses to an attitudes survey also determine that participants favor a combination of explicit instruction and visual feedback. This study concludes that learners are able to generalize pronunciation knowledge of tokens in a carrier phrase to longer discourse, as well as from focus to non-focus phonemes

Factors Motivating Individuals with no School-Based Agricultural Education Background To Enter the Profession

Teacher recruitment and retention have been deemed a national issue across all disciplines and grade-levels in education. School-based agricultural education (SBAE) has been no exception as it has also seen a substantial decline in individuals majoring in agricultural education, entering the teaching profession, and then choosing to remain a SBAE teacher until eligible for retirement. This has resulted in a shortage of qualified SBAE teachers across the country. While alternative licensure routes have existed to help fill these teaching vacancies, it has done little to solve the long-term problem of acquiring qualified, career SBAE teachers. Agricultural education stakeholder groups have been tasked with identifying potential individuals to fill this rapidly expanding employment gap. To accomplish this task, it has been necessary to recruit from non-traditional demographic groups, including those individuals who never experienced SBAE as a student. While the number of teachers that currently fit within that demographic are relatively small, the potential to recruit SBAE teachers from that population has shown promise. The purpose of this study was to examine factors that influenced current SBAE teachers, that never experienced SBAE as a student, to major in and pursue a career in agricultural education. Specific objectives included: (1) identify factors motivating former non-SBAE students to enter the agricultural education profession; (2) describe the advantages and disadvantages of not having participated in a SBAE program; and (3) identify strategies to recruit individuals that did not participate in a SBAE program.To investigate the research problem and specific objectives, a qualitative study was conducted. A phenomenological approach was used to examine the phenomenon of former non-SBAE students entering the agricultural education profession. Current Illinois SBAE teachers that never participated in a high school or middle school SBAE program were identified by Illinois agricultural education state staff. Ten individuals that met the criteria agreed to participate in semi-structured interviews conducted by the researcher. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Open coding was used to reveal themes based on the research objectives and interview questions. Common themes developed explaining reasons former non-SBAE students chose to enter the agricultural education profession. Themes revealed included possessing an agricultural background, taking agriculture coursework in college, growing up in a family of teachers, and having the career suggested to them by another. Having no pre-conceived notions of SBAE was identified as an advantage and the lack of FFA and SAE knowledge was identified as a disadvantage of not participating in a SBAE program. Further, a potential recruitment strategy identified included encouraging individuals in SBAE to be advocates of the profession. It is recommended future research is conducted on a larger scale and with other non-traditional demographic groups