Collusive Bidding in the FCC Spectrum Auctions

This paper describes the signaling that occurred in many of the FCC spectrum auctions. The FCC's simultaneous ascending auctions allowed bidders to bid on numerous communication licenses simultaneously, with bidding remaining open on all licenses until no bidder was willing to raise the bid on any license. Simultaneous open bidding allowed bidders to send messages to their rivals, telling them on which licenses to bid and which to avoid. This "code bidding" occurs when one bidder tags the last few digits of its bid with the market number of a related license. Such bids can help bidders coordinate a division of the licenses, and enforce the proposed division through targeted punishments. Often the meaning of a bid is clear without attaching a market number in the trailing digits. Such a "retaliating bid" need not end in a market number to warn off a rival from a contested market. We examine how extensively bidders signaled each other with retaliating bids and code bids in the DEF-block PCS spectrum auction held from August 1996 through January 1997. We find that only a small fraction of the bidders commonly used these signals. The price differences between those markets where signaling did and did not occur were negligible. However, bidders that used these collusive bidding strategies won more than 40% of the spectrum for sale and paid significantly less for their overall winnings, suggesting that the indirect losses from code bidding and retaliation may be large.

Collusive Bidding in the FCC Spectrum Auctions

This paper describes the signaling that occurred in many of the FCC spectrum auctions. The FCC's simultaneous ascending auctions allowed bidders to bid on numerous communication licenses simultaneously, with bidding remaining open on all licenses until no bidder was willing to raise the bid on any license. Simultaneous open bidding allowed bidders to send messages to their rivals, telling them on which licenses to bid and which to avoid. This "code bidding" occurs when one bidder tags the last few digits of its bid with the market number of a related license. Such bids can help bidders coordinate a division of the licenses, and enforce the proposed division through targeted punishments. Often the meaning of a bid is clear without attaching a market number in the trailing digits. Such a "retaliating bid" need not end in a market number to warn off a rival from a contested market. We examine how extensively bidders signaled each other with retaliating bids and code bids in the DEF-block PCS spectrum auction held from August 1996 through January 1997. We find that only a small fraction of the bidders commonly used these signals. The price differences between those markets where signaling did and did not occur were negligible. However, bidders that used these collusive bidding strategies won more than 40% of the spectrum for sale and paid significantly less for their overall winnings, suggesting that the indirect losses from code bidding and retaliation may be large.Auctions, Collusion; Multiple Object Auctions; Spectrum Auctions

Collusive Bidding: Lessons from the FCC Spectrum Auctions

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spectrum auctions use a simultaneous ascending auction design. Bidders bid on numerous communication licenses simultaneously, with bidding remaining open on all licenses until no bidder is willing to bid higher on any license. With full revelation of bidding information, simultaneous open bidding allows bidders to send messages to their rivals, telling them on which licenses to bid and which to avoid. These strategies can help bidders coordinate a division of the licenses, and enforce the proposed division by directed punishments. We examine solutions to mitigate collusive bidding in the spectrum auctions, and then apply these ideas to the design of daily electricity auctions.Auctions, Collusion; Multiple Object Auctions; Spectrum Auctions

Wage Bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act

Sections 8(a)(3) and 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act prevent a firm from unilaterally increasing the wage it pays the union during the negotiation of a new wage contract. To understand this regulation, we study a counterfactual negotiation model where the firm can temporarily increase compensation to its employees during wage negotiations. Comparing this to the case where the firm does not have this option, we show that the firm may strategically increase the union's temporary wage to upset the union's incentive to strike, decreasing the union's bargaining power, and shrinking the set of permanent wage contracts that may arise in a perfect equilibrium. As the union becomes more patient, the best possible equilibrium contract to the union gets worse. In the limit, the uniqueness and hence the full efficiency of the perfect equilibrium are restored. We also demonstrate that allowing the union to refuse the firm's temporary compensation does not affect the set of perfect equilibrium outcomesBargaining, Negotiation, Good Faith Bargaining

A Revelation Principle for Dominant Strategy Implementation

We introduce a perfect price discriminating (PPD) mechanism for allocation problems with private information. A PPD mechanism treats a seller, for example, as a perfect price discriminating monopolist who faces a price schedule that does not depend on her report. In any PPD mechanism, every player has a dominant strategy to truthfully report her private information. We establish a revelation principle for dominant strategy implementation: any outcome that can be dominant strategy implemented can also be dominant strategy implemented using a PPD mechanism. We apply this principle to derive the optimal, budget-balanced, dominant strategy mechanisms for public good provision and bilateral bargaining

A Note on k-price Auctions with Complete Information When Mixed Strategies are Allowed

Restricting attention to players who use pure strategies, Tauman (2002) proves that in a k-price auction (k\u3e 3) for every Nash equilibrium in which no player uses a weakly dominated strategy: (i) the bidder with the highest value wins the auction and (ii) pays a price higher than the second-highest value among the players, thereby generating more revenue for the seller than would occur in a first- or second-price auction. We show that these results do not necessarily hold when mixed strategies are allowed. In particular, we construct an equilibrium for k \u3e 4 in which the second-highest valued player wins the auction and makes an expected payment strictly less than her value. This equilibrium–which exists for any generic draw of player valuations–involves only one player using a nondegenerate mixed strategy, for which the amount of mixing can be made arbitrarily small

Who Am I? DegreeWorks Edition

Designed for LIF101: Liberal Arts First Year Seminar, “Who Am I? DegreeWorks Edition” is developed with the intention to help students (and maybe also their professors!) navigate Pathways [a system of general education requirements and transfer guidelines designed to ease student transfer between CUNY colleges] facilitate advising, and understand general degree expectations. By projecting an actual DegreeAudit in class, students better understand academic requirements as well as their academic profile within CUNY. The entire assignment takes one to two hours of class time, and then a further two to three hours for students to complete on their own. Obviously, as an advising lesson, this assignment synthesizes a number of advising discussions and exercises conducted previously, and then asks students to integrate this previous knowledge in order to understand where they stand with their degree—and, more importantly, what is left to be done. This assignment is worth 5% of their grade. If possible, conduct this activity in a computer lab in order to have them see their own work in real time

Emotion regulation deficits and depression-related maladaptive interpersonal behaviours

Coyne’s interpersonal theory of depression posits that those with depressive symptoms engage in maladaptive interpersonal behaviours that, although intended to assuage distress, push away social supports and increase depressive symptoms (Coyne, 1976). Excessive reassurance seeking, negative feedback seeking, and conversational self-focus are three behaviours implicated in Coyne’s theory, yet their correlates- apart from depressive symptoms- are poorly understood. The current study considered the potential role of intrapersonal emotion regulation deficits as an additional vulnerability factor for these behaviours. Mediation models further tested whether linkages between emotion regulation deficits and maladaptive interpersonal behaviours helped to explain short-term increases in depressive symptoms, as further suggested by theory. Older adolescents (N = 291, M age = 18.9) completed self-report measures of emotion regulation deficits, depressive symptoms, and the three maladaptive interpersonal behaviours during an initial lab visit and again four weeks later. A series of multiple regression models suggested that emotion regulation difficulties are uniquely associated with each of the behaviours over and above the impact of depressive symptoms. Mediation analyses suggested that only excessive reassurance seeking mediated the association between initial emotion regulation deficits and increased depressive symptoms over time. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed

Preaching to the Choir: Turning Anger Into Engagement at Urban Community Colleges

In the wake of the election, I attempt to channel my students' understandable anger, fear, and rage into activism (broadly concieved) outside the classroom