How well do conservation auctions perform in achieving landscape‐level outcomes? A comparison of auction formats and bid selection criteria

This paper studies the performance of auction design features regarding pricing mechanisms and bid selection criteria for securing wildlife zones across different holdings. We compare two pricing mechanisms: a discriminatory‐price auction and a uniform‐price ascending auction, and four bid selection criteria on the basis of: total bid, bid‐per‐value ratio, bid‐per‐area ratio and a mixed criterion where bids are formed on the basis of cost but they are selected based on the bid‐per‐value ratio. We develop a best‐response group‐bidding model for a discriminatory‐price auction where bidders form optimal group bids for individual wildlife zones. In the uniform‐price ascending auction, individual landholders respond to prices, which are successively raised by the auctioneer and whenever all the landholders from a single zone agree to participate (i.e. the first zone is formed), the auction stops. Based on numerical simulations using a bio‐economic model of malleefowl conservation, we observe that the discriminatory‐price auction is more cost‐effective than the uniform‐price ascending auction. However, the budgetary cost‐effectiveness of a discriminatory‐price auction is sensitive to bidder uncertainty about the number of competing bidder groups and the highest cost of establishing a wildlife zone among these groups. In terms of bid selection, the mixed bid selection criterion performs best. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.     

Experimental Auction Procedure: Impact on Valuation of Quality Differentiated Goods

Despite increased use of experimental auctions, a myriad of different procedures are being employed without formal consideration of how the procedures might affect results. This study investigates the effect of several procedural issues on valuation estimates from experimental auctions. Results indicate the second price auction generates higher valuations than English, Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) , and random n th price auctions, especially in latter bidding rounds, and that random n th price auction yields lower valuations than English and BDM auctions. We find that endowing subjects with a good prior to eliciting bids can have an impact on valuations, but the effect varies across auction mechanism.     

Environmental services auctions under regulatory threat

This paper examines how strategic responses of bidders and efficiency properties are impacted in auctions for the procurement of environmental services when a threat of regulation is levied. Laboratory experiments reveal characteristics of bidder behavior in different regulatory environments. Experimental results provide insight into efficiency and equity tradeoffs inherent in regulatory policy applications with respect to environmental services auctions. While it is possible to reduce the amount of public funds necessary to purchase a given level of environmental services, adverse selection costs and equity considerations may outstrip the benefits gained from threat implementation.     

Water markets in Australia: an experimental analysis of alternative market mechanisms

Formal water markets in Australia began as uniform price open call markets. As water markets in Australia continue to expand and mature, water managers are introducing double auction water markets, believing that such markets will produce more efficient outcomes. It is therefore timely and policy relevant to explore the relative merits of the two auction mechanisms in context. To date, experimental comparisons of these auction mechanisms have been based on balanced, single unit designs with defined buyers and sellers. However, many resource markets involve trade in multiple unit, often thin, double auction markets. This paper questions whether a multiple unit double auction performs as well as the more traditional open multiple unit call auction in a series of thin water market experiments.     

Shared Agents and Competition in Laboratory English Auctions

At livestock auctions, the same purchasing agent can represent more than one processor. Repeated multiple-unit English auctions are created in a laboratory to measure the impact of shared agents on trade prices under alternative treatments with six, and as few as two, agents representing six principals. Treatments are constructed in which the agents either know or do not know quantity for sale, and in which there are progressively fewer agents bidding. Knowledge of quantity for sale can be anticompetitive. Evolution toward increased market concentration leads to consistent anticompetitive pricing, resulting in prices significantly lower than the predicted competitive equilibrium prices.     

关于工业用地“招拍挂”的研究

本文简要分析了当前工业用地中存在的主要问题和实行工业用地“招拍挂”的意义,对实行工业用地“招拍挂”中应解决的几个关键性问题,以及实行工业用地“招拍挂”的制度建设和技术条件进行了重点剖析,在此基础上对开展工业用地“招拍挂”工作提出建议。     

昆明国际花卉拍卖交易中心营销模式初探

本文通过对昆明国际花卉交易拍卖中心的实地调查和分析,指出现代花卉拍卖取代传统的农贸市场式的“对手交易”是现代花卉业发展的必然趋势。探悉了昆明国际花卉拍卖交易中心在发展中所面临的主要问题,并从云南花卉产业现有的产业组织体系、科技支撑体系、市场产品结构及社会化服务等方面,提出了相应的营销措施。     

我国水产品拍卖交易方式探析

实施拍卖交易是我国水产品批发市场交易方式创新的必然选择。鉴于我国水产品批发市场全面推行拍卖交易存在许多制约因素,当前仍可以采取拍卖交易与对手交易相结合的模式,逐步扩大拍卖交易范围,实现以拍卖交易为主的发展模式。     

Hedonic pricing and the role of stud fees in the market for thoroughbred yearlings in Australia

Using data from one of Australia's largest thoroughbred auction houses, we investigate the price determinants of thoroughbred yearlings sold at auction. We include novel key variables to construct hedonic pricing models and examine the relative role of stud fees compared to the wide range of attributes in the pricing of yearlings. We find that the price effect of stud fees is influenced by the value buyers place on both the characteristics of sires and the characteristics of sire side siblings. The findings imply that the quality of dams a sire has been matched within the breeding market has consequential effects on yearling prices through the sire's stud fee and progeny.     

城市再生水项目的特许经营权拍卖机制设计及水价研究

通过对城市再生水特许经营项目的考察,探讨了特许经营项目中再生水如何定价的问题,设计了一种具有可分性的再生水特许经营权拍卖机制,并分别研究了在这种拍卖机制下项目公司向政府指定机构售水的价格的影响因素以及政府指定机构向用户售水的价格的确定方法。最后考察了这种拍卖机制所具有的激励相容特点。     

以石料矿权拍卖为突破口推进矿权市场建设

本文以石料矿权拍卖为突破口,论证了推进矿业权市场建设的五大举措.     

Negative Values in Vickrey Auctions

Some people assign negative values for new products sold on laboratory auction blocks (i.e., irradiated meat). We explore bidding behavior in two Vickrey auctions when people have positive- and negative-induced values for the good. Aggregate bidding in the second-price auction is precise but biased—highest-value positive bidders tend to overstate benefits, whereas lowest-negative bidders understate losses. In contrast, bidding behavior in the random n th-price auction is demand revealing irrespective of induced value, but it is imprecise. Examining on- and off-margin bidding behavior, we cannot conclude that any segments of demand are significantly different than the demand revealing regression line.     

The Collusion-deterring Effect of Pre-attributed Supplies and the Hog Auction in Quebec

The hog/pork industry in Quebec has been going through major institutional changes since 1989, the year an electronic auction was put in place to market all of the hogs in the province. Because the auction's ability to generate high prices did not meet the expectations of hog producers, the pure auction system was replaced by a hybrid one in 1994. In this system, most of the hog supply was pre-attributed to processors at a negotiated price based on the US. price while the remainder of the provincial supply of hogs was sold through the auction. In this paper, we investigate how a seemingly inefficient marketing mechanism like pre-attributions can increase the efficiency of a usually efficient mechanism like an auction. We present theoretical arguments regarding the sustainability of collusion under the pure auction and hybrid systems in addition to analyzing auction prices with modern time series tools.     

土地拍卖中的预算约束因素研究

研究目的:分析土地拍卖中"价高者得"可能导致低效后果的原因,完善土地出让制度。研究方法:运用资产拍卖理论分析土地拍卖过程。研究结果:现实存在的预算约束确实会扭曲资源配置的效率,导致价高者得的规则失效。研究结论:政府应根据不同的现实条件选择合适的拍卖形式,设计与之相符的拍卖规则,控制非理性竞争,在实现较大收益的同时保证效率最优化。     

Auctions with and without the Right of First Refusal and National Park Service Concession Contracts

The National Park Service has struggled to improve the quality of service provided by concessioners for decades. To address these concerns, the Park Service eliminated the right of first refusal from the largest revenue-generating concession contract auctions beginning in 2000. This article provides models of concession contract auctions with and without the right of first refusal. The optimal bidding strategies and expected level of service are found. The results confirm the auction without the right of first refusal leads to bids that include a higher level of service.     

How to achieve fairness in payments for ecosystem services? Insights from agrobiodiversity conservation auctions

This paper provides insights into the multiple dimensions of fairness in payments for ecosystem services (PES) using the results of pilot agrobiodiversity conservation auctions. In two sites in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes farming groups bid for payments for the conservation of traditional crop varieties. We assess different payment rules relating to how to allocate payments among groups subject to a fixed conservation budget. The discriminatory, uniform and conditional payment rules tested in these case studies incorporate alternative principles of fairness, while resulting in varying conservation and distributional outcomes. The latter are measured in terms of the distributional equality of payments among farmers and groups, and the distributional effects of payments on different types of groups. Findings indicate that conservation and distributional outcomes are highly sensitive to the payment rule chosen and vary across study sites. There may be contexts where cost-effectiveness does not need to be traded-off against fairness. Yet given the number of competing fairness considerations, achieving PES outcomes that are perceived as fair is very challenging.     

基于博弈论的水权交易市场研究

针对用水户交易的情况之一———一对一用户的购(售)水交易,运用博弈论中双向拍卖和序贯谈判的相关知识,分析双方在交易中的利益博弈问题。得出结论:双方收集可靠信息,提高己方对对方的预测的准确程度也是在谈判中使己方获得最大收益的主要因素,可为将来交易市场中两个供水户和两个用水户直接交易提供参考。