The effect of bid withdrawal in a multi-object auction

The Federal Communications Commission currently utilizes a simultaneous multi-round ascending bid auction to allocate Personal Communication Services licenses. In the auction, participants are allowed to withdraw standing bids at a penalty. The penalty is equal to the maximum of zero or the difference between the value of the withdrawn bid on a license and the highest bid after the withdrawal on that license. The withdrawal rule is designed to assist bidders wishing to assemble combinations of licenses who find themselves stranded with an assortment of licenses for which their bids sum to more than their value. This paper reports results of experiments that examine the effect of the withdrawal rule in environments in which losses can occur if packages of licenses must be assembled piecemeal. The experiments demonstrate that there is a tradeoff with using the rule: efficiency and revenue increase, but individual losses are larger. Furthermore, the increased efficiency does not outweigh the higher prices paid so that bidder surplus falls in the presence of the withdrawal rule. Received: 10 October 1997 / Accepted: 10 September 1998     

Linear learning in changing environments

The decision maker receives signals imperfectly correlated with an unobservable state variable and must take actions whose payoffs depend on the state. The state randomly changes over time. In this environment, we examine the performance of simple linear updating rules relative to Bayesian learning. We show that a range of parameters exists for which linear learning results in exactly the same decisions as Bayesian learning, although not in the same beliefs. Outside this parameter range, we use simulations to demonstrate that the consumption level attainable under the optimal linear rule is virtually indistinguishable from the one attainable under Bayes’ rule, although the respective decisions will not always be identical. These results suggest that simple rules of thumb can have an advantage over Bayesian updating when more complex calculations are more costly to perform than less complex ones. We demonstrate the implications of such an advantage in an evolutionary model where agents “learn to learn.”     

Partial knowledge restrictions on the two-stage threshold model of choice

In the context of the two-stage threshold model of decision making, with the agent’s choices determined by the interaction of three “structural variables,” we study the restrictions on behavior that arise when one or more variables are exogenously known. Our results supply necessary and sufficient conditions for consistency with the model for all possible states of partial knowledge, and for both single- and multi-valued choice functions.     

On the robustness of the competitive equilibrium: Utility-improvements and equilibrium points

We show that the set of competitive equilibrium points of a pure exchange economy are the equilibrium points of a broader class of better-response demands than the usual utility-maximizing demand functions. The better-response demands are derived from assigning weights to all commodity bundles with higher utility than the current commodity bundle, with the greatest weights being placed on the commodity bundles with the highest utility gain. The usual utility-maximizing demand functions are then those in which the weight on the utility-maximizing bundle is one. We also show that these better-response demands belong to a large class of response maps that are generated by monotonic transformations of the utility functions and/or monotonic transformations of the weights assigned to the commodity bundles.     

An options-based approach to analyze auction guarantees in the art market

Auction-house guarantees are becoming a common feature in the art market. We analyze these guarantees within the framework of financial options. This approach allows us to derive analytical (closed-form) expressions to value these positions, considering both, the case in which the painting is sold, and the case in which the painting goes unsold (“bought in”). In addition, we present several risk metrics that are useful to describe from an intuitive viewpoint the exposure of the auction house, and that of a third party (in case the auction house decides to layoff, fully or partially, the risk associated with offering such guarantees). We demonstrate that the expressions we derive satisfy the put-call parity relationship, and we further validate these formulas with a Monte Carlo simulation applied to a realistic example. We also show that the risk associated with such guarantees is lower than what is commonly believed by market practitioners, and we expose the dangers of relying on the Black-Scholes model to value such guarantees. Finally, having explicit expressions to assess the risk involved in these guarantees helps to bring more transparency to a notoriously opaque segment of the art market.     

Beyond death: The impact of a population-wide health shock on life insurance

Population-wide health shocks, for example, pandemics, affect life insurance owners beyond their health impact. This paper considers joint impacts of their surrender behavior adaptions and mortality rise following a population-wide health shock on insurance pricing. We build a model that captures both more surrenders of contracts to meet unexpected liquidity needs and less financially beneficial surrenders to keep insurance protection after the shock. Unlike the systemic mortality rise impact that turns out to be negligible, we find that policyholders’ surrender behavior adaptions substantially devalue policies with increasing emergency surrenders being the main driver. Regulatory solvency protection partly restrains the devaluation.     

Humanitarian demining for the clearance of landmine-affected areas

Humanitarian demining is the process of removing landmines from contaminated areas. Behind this arduous task lies a high risk of collateral damage to deminers and their equipment. The intrinsic operational cost often forces agents to abandon the task before its completion, making such areas a source of risk, especially for the civilian population and biodiversity. Most of the research to date has revolved around the technological development of devices capable of effectively detecting mines at a selected point within an area, while the search strategy itself to decide where to explore and which route to follow has been understudied. This paper proposes a decision support model (DSM) that produces highly safe and cost-effective mine detection search plans. Since the computational time of the solution increases along with the size of the area explored, exact linear methods are proposed for small and medium instances of the problem, whereas a genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed for large instances. Results show that the GA approach is capable of delivering solutions close to the optimum.     

谈市场经济条件下的企业理财观念

观念的转变具有时间的滞后性 ,因此需要就企业界尚存的传统理财观念进行反思与剖析 ,并按照市场经济规律的内在要求 ,提出与国际惯例接轨的全新理财观念     

On the convergence to the Cournot equilibrium in a productive asset oligopoly

We derive a feedback equilibrium of a dynamic Cournot game where production requires exploitation of a renewable asset. As in the classical Cournot model, quantity-setting firms compete in the same market for a given homogeneous good. We show that, when the asset stock grows sufficiently fast, the unique globally asymptotically stable steady state of the dynamic Cournot game corresponds to the static Cournot solution. Initial differences between firms’ production rates due to asymmetric allocations of asset stocks tend to disappear over time. When instead the asset stock grows slowly, the system does not converge to any stationary point. We also show that, within the class of linear feedback equilibrium strategies, besides the couple of strategies that stabilizes the states for every possible initial conditions, there exists another couple which is more efficient, in that it leads to higher stationary equilibrium profits for both firms, closer to the collusive outcome. Finally, we show that, as the discount rate approaches zero, there exist multiple linear feedback equilibrium strategies that induce a price trajectory that converges asymptotically to a price which is above the static Cournot equilibrium price.     

Transforming industrial relations in Russia: a case of convergence with industrialised market economies?

Here the authors discuss the ‘old unions’, the ‘new unions’ and the still dominant role of the state. They show how contemporary IR includes changes towards arrangements that are more typical of industrialised market economies (IMEs); nevertheless, there are significant continuities with past patterns, and divergences from IMEs’ arrangements.     

Application of a double bootstrap to investigation of determinants of technical efficiency of farms in Central Europe

The paper provides one of the first applications of the double bootstrap procedure (Simar and Wilson 2007) in a two-stage estimation of the effect of environmental variables on non-parametric estimates of technical efficiency. This procedure enables consistent inference within models explaining efficiency scores, while simultaneously producing standard errors and confidence intervals for these efficiency scores. The application is to 88 livestock and 256 crop farms in the Czech Republic, split into individual and corporate.

浅析垄断性矿产资源的市场化改革思路——以上饶应家磁坞金矿采矿权首次拍卖为例

矿产资源勘查和开发行业作为先行性的基础行业,直接关系国民经济的发展大局。但是目前我国矿产行业存在不少问题,改革迫在眉睫。本文以上饶应家磁坞金矿采矿权首次拍卖为例,从经济学角度分析我国目前垄断性资源改革的特点,并针对不足提出垄断性资源的市场化改革的思路。     

On the optimal size of Social Security in the presence of a stock market

The paper develops a stylized overlapping generations economy with random production and a stock market. The impact of a Social Security system on production, asset markets, and consumer welfare is analyzed. It is shown that any reduction in the contribution rate fosters capital accumulation and increases asset prices, wages, and production output. Different welfare criteria are applied to determine the optimal size of Social Security. It is shown that there exists a unique contribution rate which is long-run optimal, socially optimal, and time-consistent in the sense that no generation has an incentive to change it.     

Varieties of agents in agent-based computational economics: A historical and an interdisciplinary perspective

In this paper, we trace four origins of agent-based computational economics (ACE), namely, the markets origin, the cellular-automata origin, the tournaments origin, and the experiments origin. Along with this trace, we examine how these origins have motivated different concepts and designs of agents in ACE, which starts from the early work on simple programmed agents, randomly behaving agents, zero-intelligence agents, human-written programmed agents, autonomous agents, and empirically calibrated agents, and extends to the newly developing cognitive agents, psychological agents, and culturally sensitive agents. The review also shows that the intellectual ideas underlying these varieties of agents cross several disciplines, which may be considered as a part of a general attempt to study humans (and their behavior) with an integrated interdisciplinary foundation.     

More than just a special case: The value of double bind theory for bringing light into the dark side of organizational paradoxes

In their recently published article, Berti and Simpson introduced a comprehensive framework for the systematic analysis of the dark side of organizational paradoxes. While I follow the authors in connecting the analysis of this dark side to types of organizational power, I am concerned with the narrow view on double binds as an expression of coercions only. This narrow view not only runs counter to the basic idea of double bind theory, but also neglects or even denies transition dynamics between different types of organizational double binds. To address these issues, I develop an alternative framework for the analysis of the dark side of organizational power that considers double binds in a broader and more fruitful way. This framework not only facilitates the analysis of transition dynamics between types of double binds, but also reveals practical strategies for mitigating paradoxes and disentangling them from implicit structures that are in the blind spot of Berti and Simpson's framework.     

关于高校奖学金评定制度的研究

本文从奖学金评定制度现存的主要问题入手,提出应在奖学金评定过程中加强思想政治教育,最后,本文论述了构建合理的奖学金评定制度和奖学金评定委员会的必要性。     

韩国住房市场中的政府干预

回顾了韩国住房市场政府干预的背景,总结了其政策目标、政策工具及政府干预的框架体系.     

The invisible hand of Laplace: The role of market structure in price convergence and oscillation

The “invisible hand” of the free market is remarkably effective at producing near-equilibrium prices. This is difficult to quantify, however, in the absence of an agreed model for out-of-equilibrium trade. Short of a fully reductionist model, a useful substitute would be a scaling law relating equilibration time and other market parameters. Even this, however, is missing in the literature.We make progress in this direction. We examine a class of Arrow–Debreu markets with price signaling driven by continuous-time proportional-tâtonnement. We show that the connectivity among the participants in the market determines quite accurately a scaling law for convergence time of the market to equilibrium, and thus determines the effectiveness of the price signaling. To our knowledge this is the first characterization of price stability in terms of market connectivity. At a technical level, we show how convergence in our class of markets is determined by a market-dependent Laplacian matrix.If a market is not isolated but, rather, subject to external noise, equilibrium theory has predictive value only to the extent to which that noise is counterbalanced by the price equilibration process. Our model quantifies this predictive value by providing a scaling law that relates the connectivity of the market with the variance of its prices.