He who must not be named

Landsberger et al. have studied a sealed bid first price auction with two players in which the ranking of the valuations is known. They argue that such a situation can arise in a sequential auction where only the name of the winner is revealed. In this paper we consider sequential auctions where two identical goods are sold sequentially to N players who are interested in both objects. In sealed bid auctions, no information is a priori revealed by the mechanism, but the seller can in principle reveal whatever he wants. We restrict our attention to the case where only the name of the winner is revealed to be in the context of Landsberger et al. for the second auction. The aim of the paper is to compare such a sequential auction with a simultaneous auction where both goods are sold as a bundle or equivalently with a sequential auction where no information is revealed. We first show that there exists an equilibrium of the sequential game in pure and monotone strategies. Then, the comparison of the seller's expected revenue in the two cases allows us to conclude that contrary to Landsberger et al.'s predictions, the seller can not use the information to increase his revenue. This result is obtained using simulations for a large class of distribution functions. The seller must not reveal the name of the winner between the two auctions and instead sell both goods using a simultaneous auction.Received: 31 July 2001, Accepted: 5 February 2003, JEL Classification: B44I wish to thank Laurent Linnemer, Thomas Ricke, Michael Visser and Shmuel Zamir for helpful comments and suggestions. I am very grateful to the referees and the associated editors in charge of my paper.     

房地产开发用地招拍挂制度的市场绩效研究

我国的土地出让招拍挂制度是具有重大意义的市场竞争性交易制度和社会资源配王方式.论文运用拍卖理论简要回顾了土地招拍挂制度影响市场绩效的经济学原理,对全国(2003-2005)和北京(2005-2007)城市土地有偿出让市场进行了分类统计,并以此数据为基础对招标、拍卖和挂牌三种不同出让方式的市场绩效进行了对比分析,得出了我国土地出让市场中存在理论和实践并不一致的结论,并指出了造成该问题的原因是政府对招拍挂制度的干预,最后提出了提高招拍挂制度绩效的建议.     

Implementing optimal procurement auctions with exogenous quality

In this paper, we consider the implementation of the optimal procurement auction outcome when there is a trade-off between price and quality for the buyer. The quality proposals of the competing firms are assumed to be exogenous and common knowledge. After defining the optimal auction, we characterize the discriminatory first score auction and the modified second score auction implementing it when the buyer is assumed to have the same information as the firms. Then we consider an auction which requires no specific information from the buyer and show that a second score auction followed by a negotiation stage can implement the optimal auction outcome under this more realistic assumption. Received: 30 March 2001 / Accepted: 14 December 2001 I am grateful to the anonymous referees for comments on an earlier version of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

The central government grant allocation problem in the presence of misrepresentation and cheating

This study deals with the central government grant allocation problem under conditions of asymmetric information. Using a simple model, we examine herein the optimal design of random audit and incentive mechanisms to encourage the grantee (the local government authority) to report truthfully on local parameters required in the granting process. The local government authority must choose between two possibilities: a menu of contracts that could be considered as a matching grant programme with random auditing vs. a lump-sum grant without any audit mechanism. We will show that addressing the optimal grant system problem is similar to comparing slopes on the graph of the indirect local government welfare function at two distinct points.Received: January 2003, Accepted: November 2003, JEL Classification: H21, H23, H71, H77We would like to express our thanks to Howard Chernick and an anonymous referee for their extremely helpful comments.     

Auctions with endogenous participation

We study endogenous-participation auctions where bidders only know the number of potential participants. After seeing their values for the object, potential participants decide whether or not to enter the auction. They may not want to enter the auction since they have to pay participation costs. We characterize equilibrium bidding strategies and entry decisions for both first- and second-price sealed-bid auctions when participation is endogenous. We show that there is a pure strategy entry equilibrium where only bidders with values greater than a certain cut-off point actually bid. In this context, both types of auctions generate the same expected revenue. We also show that, contrary to the predictions of the fixed number of bidders literature, the seller's expected revenue may decrease when the number of potential participants increases. In addition, we show that it is optimal for the seller to charge an entry fee, which contrasts with results from the existing literature on auctions with entry. As in the fixed-n literature, we show that first-price auctions generate more expected revenue than second-price auctions when buyers are risk-averse. Finally, we characterize the optimal auction – the auction that maximizes the seller's expected revenue – by using a direct revelation mechanism. The optimal auction involves a reserve price larger than the optimal reserve price in the fixed-n literature. The winner's payment is the second highest bid less the participation cost and losers receive a subsidy equal to the participation cost. Received: 17 August 1998 / 21 September 1999     

Electricity Auctions

This article examines auctions in the electricity industry. We find that the laws of physics that rule power transmission networks defeat ex post productive efficiency: the cheapest combination of generating plants is not always selected, not even in the optimal auction. Furthermore, neither the pay-your-bid nor the uniform-price auction coincides in general with the optimal auction, nor do they yield productive efficiency. Our analysis also sheds light on behavior observed in existing power markets, and leads to policy recommendations. First, producers protected by transmission constraints must see their bids capped in the short run to curb their ability to extract large rents. Second, producers apparently hurt by the unavailability of transmission capacity may benefit from it. Hence, contrary to common wisdom, policy makers cannot rely on them to finance or advocate transmission expansion.     

Who else is bidding? The Pareto optimality of disclosing bidder identities

This paper examines whether the seller of an object should reveal the identities of the participating bidders before bids become due. It is shown that when bidders experience identity dependent externalities and auction participation is exogenous, then for a large class of standard auction mechanisms, a policy of revelation serves to realize a higher surplus because it improves the accuracy of each bidder's estimate of her ex-post willingness-to-pay, and therefore changes the auction allocation in a more ex-post efficient manner. Furthermore, it is shown that the policy of revelation increases both the expected seller revenues as well as ex-ante expected bidder payoffs. Received: 4 February 2000 / Accepted: 15 November 2000 An earlier version of this paper had the title 'Disclosure of Bidder Identities'. I thank an anonymous referee and an Associate Editor for suggestions that improved the paper. I also acknowledge comments made by participants of the Auctions session during the North American Winter Meetings of the Econometric Society 2001 held in New Orleans. I remain solely responsible for any errors.     

Process innovation and the persistence of monopoly with labour-managed firms

The issue of the persistence of monopoly when at least one labour-managed firm takes part in an auction for a cost-reducing innovation is tackled in this paper. It is shown that (i) when the incumbent is a profit-maximizing firm while the entrant is a labour-managed firm, monopoly persists; (ii) when both firms are labour-managed, monopoly persists only if the technology initially employed by the incumbent is highly inefficient as compared to the new one; and, finally, (iii) when the incumbent is labour-managed while the outsider is a profit seeking agent, then entry always occurs and monopoly changes hands. Received: 3 July 1997 / Accepted: 16 February 1998     

Production of public safety: Are socioeconomic characteristics of local communities important factors?

This paper uses the translog cost function and cross section data from Florida to investigate the importance of socioeconomic characteristics (SEC) of local communities in the production of public safety. The approach used is noteworthy in four respects: (1) the underlying production function is specified as an AGEM production function; (2) SEC are treated as non-purchased fixed inputs; (3) two variables are used to proxy SEC in estimation; and (4) the paper test for the existence of endogenous quality differences in safety. It is shown that exclusion of SEC from the production (cost) function of safety leads to misspecification; and hence they provide a misleading guide to policy.     

The generalized Stackelberg equilibrium of the all-pay auction with complete information

We characterize the equilibrium of the all-pay auction with general convex cost of effort and sequential effort choices. We consider a set of n players who are arbitrarily partitioned into a group of players who choose their efforts ‘early’ and a group of players who choose ‘late’. Only the player with the lowest cost of effort has a positive payoff in any equilibrium. This payoff depends on his own timing vis-a-vis the timing of others. We also show that the choice of timing can be endogenized, in which case the strongest player typically chooses ‘late’, whereas all other players are indifferent with respect to their choice of timing. In the most prominent equilibrium the player with the lowest cost of effort wins the auction at zero aggregate cost. We thank Dan Kovenock and Luis C. Corchón for discussion and helpful comments. The usual caveat applies. Wolfgang Leininger likes to express his gratitude to Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB) for its generous hospitality and financial support.     

Implementation of the revenue-maximizing auction by an ignorant seller

In a general auction framework with independent private values, we propose a game, with a simple economic interpretation, that allows to implement the revenue-maximizing auction outcome when the seller ignores the distributions of the different bidders’ valuations. In this detail-free implementation procedure, an ascending-price contest is organized and the winner volunteers a payment to the seller; this payment can then be challenged by another bidder who knows the distribution of the winner’s valuation.Received: 4 June 2003, Accepted: 4 April 2005, We have benefited from comments by seminar participants at the Econometric Society North American Winter Meeting and European Meeting, PURC University of Florida, University of Wisconsin, as well as by two referees and an Associate Editor. The authors also wish to acknowledge the hospitality of IDEI in Toulouse where they started this research. The second author acknowledges the financial support of CRSHC, CIRANO and the Bell University Labs.     

排污权拍卖方式比较研究

排污权交易是基于市场的经济政策.排污权拍卖方式的选择是决定排污权交易市场效率的关键问题.文章首先阐述了排污权拍卖的意义和特点,然后提出了排污权拍卖三种不同方式,并从期望收益、有效性、公平性和简便性等方面进行了比较,最后得出我国排污权的拍卖应采用单一价格拍卖方式。     

Optimal fees in internet auctions

An auction house runs a second-price auction with a possibility of resale through re-auctions. It collects listing and closing fees from the seller. We find the fees which maximize the revenue of the auction house. In particular, we show that the optimal listing fee is zero. Our findings are consistent with the policies of eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, and other Internet auctions.      

Optimal auctions with multidimensional types and the desirability of exclusion

Within the context of a single-unit, independent private values auction model, we show that if bidder types are multidimensional, then under the optimal auction exclusion of a positive measure of bidder types occur. The results complements Armstrong’s (1996) exclusion of types result.     

Bayesian estimation approaches to first-price auctions

This paper considers Bayesian estimation strategies for first-price auctions within the independent private value paradigm. We develop an ‘optimization’ error approach that allows for estimation of values assuming that observed bids differ from optimal bids. We further augment this approach by allowing systematic over or underbidding by bidders using ideas from the stochastic frontier literature. We perform a simulation study to showcase the appeal of the method and apply the techniques to timber auction data collected in British Columbia. Our results suggest that significant underbidding is present in the timber auctions.     

多单位网上拍卖中的托投标分析

在独立私有价值的多单位网上英式拍卖中，诚实的竞标者能够采用对抗性的竞标策略来降低卖者参与托投标的激励，然而即使考虑了诚实竞标者对于托投标的策略性响应，托投标对于卖者而言依然是有利可图的。更为有效地阻止托投标的措施可能包括吸引更多的潜在竞标者，并限制在单次拍卖中销售的物品数量。同时考虑了卖者对于这种对抗性竞标策略的策略响应，求解了卖者的最优托投标，结论表明无论最优的托投标是唯一的还是多重的，卖者的最优策略是在开始使用低的托投标，在观察到之前的竞标信息之后通过动态调整将托投标设定到最优水平。     

Charity auctions as assets: Theory and simulations of fundraising risk management in mean-variance space

This paper demonstrates how the risk over auction revenue at fundraising events can be managed with modern portfolio theory. Within the independent private values (IPV) framework, it is shown that auction mechanisms offer charities an inherent mean-variance tradeoff over revenue when contributions produce a public good benefit among bidders. This allows the fundraiser to construct a “portfolio” of auction mechanisms for their event so as to manage auction revenue outcomes according to the charity's risk preferences. Simulations provide support for the empirical prominence of the second-price winner-pay (i.e. English) auction, as this is often the portfolio's most heavily weighted mechanism under reasonable risk preferences.     

Establishing a reputation for dependability by means of inflation targets

This paper develops a simple intertemporal model of inflation targets within a framework in which the public is uncertain about the dependability of policymakers, and in which policymakers do not perfectly control inflation. The framework is used to evaluate the effects of various parameters like the rate of time preference, initial reputation, and transparency (or precision of inflation control) on planned inflation, announced targets and the evolution of reputation and of inflationary expectations. The paper also shows that, when allowed to choose the precision of inflation control, more dependable policymakers will often choose relatively more precise control procedures. Implications for the type of inflation stabilization (cold turkey or gradual) chosen by dependable policymakers are also derived. Received: February 15, 1999 / Accepted: March 26, 1999     

Anticipation of Auction Fever: Entry Decision,Reserve Price and the Choice of Auction Design

This paper analyzes the entry decision of rational bidders who expect to experience auction fever in English auctions. It shows that nonparticipation decision reduces seller's expected profit and this effect may outweigh the positive effect of the auction fever. We analyze the choice between English and second‐price sealed‐bid auctions and the optimal reserve price in English auctions. We show that it might be optimal for the seller to set a reserve price below her own valuation of the object. Finally, we show that the order in which bidders place their bids matters and the first bidder always has an advantage. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Common value auctions with independent types

In this paper I consider a common value model, with independent types, where the ex-post value of the good is influenced by the bidders' information at the auction stage. The seller cannot fully extract the surplus. In a symmetric model the optimal mechanism can be implemented through first price, second price, or English auctions; but not through a Dutch auction. Other properties of the optimal auctions are that the seller's reservation price is endogenous, and that in sealed bid auctions the price may exceed the value of the object (winner's curse).