Can preemptive bidding in takeover auctions be socially optimal? Yes it can

This paper analyzes a model of preemptive jump bidding in private value takeover auctions with entry costs. It shows that when the second bidder owns a fraction of the target firm preemptive jump bidding leads to a higher social surplus, improves the expected profit of both bidders and reduces the expected final price. Such a toehold also leads to higher jump bids. The model implies that preemptive bidding hurts the minority shareholders but benefits the large shareholder of the target firm.     

An experimental study of signaling in auctions with a flexible reserve price

This paper presents the results of an experimental study of preemptive jump bidding in English auctions with a flexible reserve price. While one of the possible explanations for jump bidding is based on signaling arguments, the ability of the seller to adjust his decision to accept an offer based on the bidding history makes the existence of a signaling equilibrium questionable. This paper shows that the seller's ability to set the reserve price after observing the opening bid reduces both jump bidding behavior and the use and interpretation of opening bids as a signaling device.     

投标人参考点效应与最优公开保留价博弈分析

本文从行为经济学出发,用博弈论的方法研究存在参考点效应时,投标人在第一价格和第二价格密封招标中的报价策略以及招标人的最优公开保留价定价策略,并对不同招标方式下投标人的期望收益进行比较。本文给出存在参考点效应时招标最优公开保留价的定价公式,分析了参考点效应和投标人数对最优公开保留价的影响。研究表明,在采用公开保留价的情况下,考虑投标人参考点效应对报价策略的影响时,不同招标方式给投标人带来的期望收益是相等的,即此时招标支付等价性命题仍然成立。此外,随着投标人参考点效应的增强和投标人数的增加,招标人的最优公开保留价下降。     

Price Discrimination under Customer Recognition and Mergers

This paper studies the interaction between horizontal mergers and price discrimination by endogenizing the merger formation process in the context of a repeated purchase model with two periods and three firms wherein firms may engage in behavior‐based price discrimination (BBPD). From a merger policy perspective, this paper's main contribution is twofold. First, it shows that when firms are allowed to price discriminate, the (unique) equilibrium merger gives rise to significant increases in profits for the merging firms (the ones with information to price discriminate), but has no ex‐post effect on the outsider firm's profitability, thereby eliminating the so‐called (static) “free‐riding problem.” Second, this equilibrium merger is shown to increase industry profits at the expense of consumers' surplus, leaving total welfare unaffected. This then suggests that competition authorities should scrutinize with greater zeal mergers in industries where firms are expected to engage in BBPD.     

Preemptive Bidding in Takeover Auctions: An Experimental Study

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on jump bidding in takeover auctions with entry costs. It provides support for signaling hypothesis behind jump bidding and analyzes how the size of the entry costs affects the bidders' behavior and their expected profits. It also shows that jump bidding allows the reallocation of the surplus from the seller to the first bidder but has little effect on the social surplus and the profits of the second bidder. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

An option pricing approach to optimal bidding in construction projects

Reaching an optimal mark‐up value in the context of construction projects' bidding competitions has been a research topic for more than 40 years. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by applying a real options approach. The proposed model has a pure theoretical nature and is based on a maximization problem, whose outcome is the optimal price, that is, the price that should be included in the bid proposal. The model is later extended to accommodate the existence of penalty costs if the selected bidder refuses to enter into contract. Results reached using a numerical example demonstrate that the optimal price is higher when penalty costs are considered.     

Preemptive bidding in takeover auctions with affiliated values

This paper extends Fishman's (1988) model of preemptive bidding in takeover auctions to auctions with affiliated values. It shows that preemptive bidding transfers wealth from the seller to the first bidder without affecting the profit of the second bidder and social welfare. It also shows that higher correlation between bidders’ values leads to higher preemption rates but has an ambiguous effect on the size of the opening bid. Finally, it shows that in auctions with affiliated values, even infinitesimal entry costs may lead to a preemptive jump bidding that allows the reallocation of the entire surplus from the seller to the first bidder.     

Preemptive bidding in common value takeover auctions: Social surplus and the target’s revenue

This paper develops a model of preemptive jump bidding in common value takeover auctions. It shows that, in a case of common values, jump bidding increases the social surplus and, under certain conditions, can lead to a higher expected target’s revenue. It also demonstrates that an increase in investigation costs may improve social efficiency even if it leads to larger direct social costs. Based on the results, the paper provides several implications related to legal fees and the length of the takeover contest.     

Providing Managerial Accounting Information in the Presence of a Supplier

Abstract

This paper identifies a novel effect which is crucial for the design of a management accounting information system. In contrast to prior literature, we explicitly model the firm's relationship to a supplier. We show that in addition to the previously identified trade-off – benefits of more information versus indirect or direct (agency) costs of information acquisition – another effect occurs: the input price effect. This effect influences the optimal design of the management accounting information system and changes the regimes where information acquisition is optimal for the principal. Also, in case of endogenous input prices we demonstrate that – perhaps surprisingly – paying an information rent to the agent can be beneficial because it works as a commitment towards an over-charging supplier to exploit the input price effect.     

投标人平行串谋与最优公开保留价博弈分析

本文将投标人平行串谋问题与招标人公开保留价定价策略相结合,研究了第二价格密封招标方式下投标串谋联盟的串谋报价及利润分配机制,分析了串谋联盟的存在对非串谋联盟中成员的投标策略和期望利润的影响,揭示了串谋联盟成员人数与串谋联盟总收益之间的关系,探讨了招标人公开保留价定价策略、串谋联盟成员人数与招标公开保留价之间的关系,指出了招标人应通过降低公开保留价的方式来防止或减少投标人平行串谋行为的发生。     

基于机构投资者非理性报价的IPO定价分析

本文主要研究机构投资者非理性报价行为。在发行人(发行人与承销商的统称)理性假设下,建立模型并研究了机构给出不同价值信号时的发行价格设定与机构获配情况。文中分析发现当机构投资者拥有好的价值信息时,发行人的报价约束是有效的;当其拥有不好的价值信息时,报价约束完全不起作用,机构投资者会蓄意传达无价值或是好的信号,造成新股价格高于其价值。     

低价中标的施工成本控制研究

现在施工项目中低价中标已经非常普遍,对施工单位来说其利润空间被大大缩小,甚至面临着保本的形势,这就对施工企业的项目管理工作提出了更为严格的要求。施工企业要想在市场竞争激烈中面对低价竞标立于不败之地,就必须做好施工项目的成本控制和项目管理工作,才能使企业达到预期的收益效果。文章就低价中标施工项目成本控制问题做了阐述,对项目施工控制有一定的参考价值。     

On the lowest-winning-bid and the highest-losing-bid auctions

Theoretical models of multi-unit, uniform-price auctions assume that the price is given by the highest losing bid. In practice, however, the price is usually given by the lowest winning bid. We derive the equilibrium bidding function of the lowest-winning-bid auction when there are k objects for sale and n bidders with unit demand, and prove that it converges to the bidding function of the highest-losing-bid auction if and only if the number of losers n−k gets large. When the number of losers grows large, the bidding functions converge at a linear rate and the prices in the two auctions converge in probability to the expected value of an object to the marginal winner.     

论信息管理在工程招标代理中的具体运用

本文就工程招标代理中前、中、后期的信息需求进行研究,全面解读工程招标代理中所需的采集信息、价格信息和反馈信息,阐释信息使用的环境、目的、频率和质量要求,以确定信息管理在实际工作流程中的具体应用,从而突出说明有效掌握与沟通信息资源的重要作用。     

Private information in futures markets: An experimental study

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on how people use their private information to estimate the “fair” futures price and how the quality of this information affects the traders' behavior and desire to trade. It finds that subjects are able to use their information correctly and that their desire to rely on it depends positively on the information precision. It shows that subjects are able to recognize that they are expected to lose money on futures trading when other traders have better quality information. However, subjects failed to recognize the symmetry of the futures contracts.     

Improving Electricity Market Price Forecasting with Factor Models for the Optimal Generation Bid

In liberalized electricity markets, the electricity generation companies usually manage their production by developing hourly bids that are sent to the day‐ahead market. As the prices at which the energy will be purchased are unknown until the end of the bidding process, forecasting of spot prices has become an essential element in electricity management strategies. In this article, we apply forecasting factor models to the market framework in Spain and Portugal and study their performance. Although their goodness of fit is similar to that of autoregressive integrated moving average models, they are easier to implement. The second part of the paper uses the spot‐price forecasting model to generate inputs for a stochastic programming model, which is then used to determine the company's optimal generation bid. The resulting optimal bidding curves are presented and analyzed in the context of the Iberian day‐ahead electricity market.     

A Comparison of Pay‐As‐Bid and Market‐Clearing Price Bidding Processes in Electric Utility Auctions

As the electric utility industry moves to Regional Transmission Organizations, there are more opportunities for merchant plants in selling wholesale energy to electric utilities. Two alternative bidding regimes are considered: (i) pay‐as‐bid and (ii) pay with market‐clearing bid. With stochastic price‐sensitive demand, we show that pay‐as‐bid has greater average price, but lower price variance than does market‐clearing price. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning quality through prices and word‐of‐mouth communication

This paper studies the effect of word‐of‐mouth communication on the optimal pricing strategy for new experience goods. I consider a dynamic monopoly model with asymmetric information about product quality, in which consumers learn in equilibrium from both prices and other consumers. The main result is that word‐of‐mouth communication is essential for the existence of separating equilibria, wherein the high‐quality monopolist signals high quality through a low introductory price (lower than the monopoly price), and the low‐quality one charges the monopoly price. The intuition is simple: low prices are costly, and will only be used by firms confident enough that increased experimentation (and therefore communication among consumers) will yield good news about quality and increased future profits. Additional results are the following: for the high‐quality seller, the expected price (quantity) is increasing (decreasing) over time; whereas for the low‐quality one, the opposite is true. Moreover, signaling becomes more difficult when consumers pay less attention to their peers' reports and more attention to past prices. Finally, word‐of‐mouth communication improves consumer welfare.     

Disclosure quality,price efficiency,and expected returns

Using a composite disclosure quality measure, we examine the effect of disclosure quality on price delay and the effect of price delay determined by disclosure quality on expected returns in the Taiwan stock market. We find that higher disclosure quality can reduce stock price delay through more investor attention and higher stock liquidity after we control for accounting quality variables and consider the endogeneity issue. Furthermore, we show that disclosure quality reduces expected stock returns through the price efficiency channel associated with both investor attention and stock liquidity. Our results indicate that increasing a firm’s standardized information rating by one standard deviation can reduce its expected stock return by 0.63% annually. Taken together, our evidence suggests that regulatory activities enforced to improve public firms’ disclosure quality in the Taiwan stock market can make the stock market more efficient and therefore lower investors’ required return for stocks.