Auctions with Financial Externalities

We study auctions with financial externalities, i.e., auctions in which losers care about how much the winner pays. In the first-price auction, larger financial externalities result in a lower expected price; in the second-price auction, the effect is ambiguous. Although the expected price in the second-price auction may increase if financial externalities increase, the seller is not able to gain more revenue by guaranteeing the losers a fraction of the auction revenue. With a reserve price, we find that both auctions may have pooling at the reserve price. This finding suggests that identical bids need not be a signal of collusion, in contrast to what is sometimes argued in anti-trust cases. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO 510.010.501 and NWO-VICI 453.03.606). For valuable discussions and comments, we would like to thank Eric van Damme, Jacob Goeree, Thomas Kittsteiner, Marta Kolodziejczyk, seminar participants at Tilburg University, Humboldt University Berlin, and National University of Singapore, and audiences at ESEM 2001 in Lausanne, and the FEEM 2002 conference in Milan on auctions and market design. The suggestions of an anonymous referee of this Journal greatly improved the article. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Auctions With A Minimum Requirement Of Bids

We show that in a procurement auction with independent and private costs of production and a positive cost of preparing a bid, the requirement of a minimum number of offers for the good to be bought always yields a unique (perfect) Bayesian equilibrium where no firm enters a bid, whatever its cost of production, the number of potential bidders and the size of the bidding cost.
To avoid the no-bid result, the buyer can commit to subsidise the losing bidders in certain circumstances. Alternatively, it can use a stochastic auction, where the provider of the good is not always the firm that bids the lowest price.     

Shiftable Externalities: A Market Solution

In this paper we propose a regulatory scheme for what has become known as shiftable externalities (Not In My Backyard type garbage location problemswhere the externality is characterized by the absence of jointness in supply).The scheme facilitates the establishment of a market for the externality, and it isfeasible for a wider class of regulation problems and more information efficientthan the other regulatory schemes that have been proposed for this type ofexternality. Finally, we show that it is possible to decentralize the participationdecision so as to take account of verification costs.     

A Unique Informationally Efficient Allocation Mechanism In Economies With Consumption Externalities*

This article investigates the informational requirements of resource allocation processes in pure exchange economies with consumption externalities. It is shown that the distributive Lindahl mechanism has a minimal informational size of the message space, and thus it is informationally the most efficient allocation process that is informationally decentralized and realizes Pareto‐efficient allocations over the class of economies that include nonmalevolent economies. Furthermore, it is shown that the distributive Lindahl mechanism is the unique informationally efficient decentralized mechanism that realizes Pareto‐efficient and individually rational allocations over a certain class of nonmalevolent economies.     

A Simple Model of Expert and Non-Expert Bidding in First-Price Auctions

This paper studies the equilibrium bidding behavior in a first-price sealed-bid auction when the number of informed bidders is not common knowledge. Both the independent private values and the common value cases are analyzed, under the assumption that a “neutral” signal exists. In equilibrium, experts and non-experts draw their bids from distinct supports: experts bid in the upper and lower tail of the bidding distribution and non-experts randomize their bids in between. For common values, it is shown that the seller's expected revenue always decreases with the probability of a bidder being informed when this probability is small. The opposite result is shown for the case of independent private values.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: D44, D82.     

Designing Multi-unit Multiple Bid Auctions: An Agent-based Computational Model of Uniform, Discriminatory and Generalised Vickrey Auctions

Multi-unit auctions are being used by public agencies to allocate resources and to purchase services. These auctions resolve the lumpy bid problem inherent in single-bid auctions by allowing bidders to submit a supply or demand schedule. However, the choice of pricing formats for multi-unit auctions is controversial. Neither economic theory nor laboratory experiments depict a complete picture of how alternative pricing formats perform in terms of budgetary or allocative efficiency. This paper constructs an agent-based computational model to compare uniform, discriminatory and generalised Vickrey pricing formats under different degrees of competition and heterogeneity in the bidder population.     

Externalities: A Note on Avoiding Confusion

In distinguishing the difference between a genuine externality and a pecuniary externity, Bohanon observes that the latter never enters third-party utility (or production) functions, whereas this is always the case with technical externalities.     

“交易外部性”:外部性的重新理解及系统整合

基于对外部性和交易本质的理解,当前生产外部性和消费外部性两分的观点有失偏颇。研究提出交易外部性概念,即产权交易过程中,交易一方或交易以外的行为主体的权利(束)或权利部分职能被交易另一方强制利用而未被定价或实现对等补偿的现象。据此,按照发生领域和作用主体的不同,外部性可以划分为生产外部性、消费外部性和交易外部性三类,其中,交易外部性进一步包含一类交易外部性、二类交易外部性和三类交易外部性。此处的二类交易外部性与史普博的内部性具有相同的本质内涵,即内部性实质是交易外部性范畴下的一个子分类。     

Auctions for PURPA purchases: A simulation study

Competition was introduced into the electric utility industry with the passage of the Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) of 1978. Increasing interest has appeared in structuring the PURPA purchase market into an auction system. This paper addresses the design issues associated with setting up such markets and introduces a simulation model to study them. The simulation analysis is guided by theoretical issues such as the alleged inefficiency of first-price auctions. We find that efficiency concerns raised about first-price auctions turn out to be less important than simple theoretical concerns would suggest.     

Auctions for social lending: A theoretical analysis

Prosper, today the second largest social lending marketplace with nearly 1.5 million members and $380 million in funded loans, employed an auction mechanism amongst lenders to finance each borrower's loan until 2010. Given that a basic premise of social lending is cheap loans for borrowers, how does the Prosper auction do in terms of the borrower's payment, when lenders are strategic agents with private true interest rates? We first analyze the Prosper auction as a game of complete information and fully characterize its Nash equilibria, and show that the uniform-price Prosper mechanism, while simple, can lead to much larger payments for the borrower than the VCG mechanism. We next compare the Prosper mechanism against the borrower-optimal auction in an incomplete information setting, and conclude by examining the Prosper mechanism when modeled as a dynamic auction, and provide tight bounds on the price for a general class of bidding strategies.     

西方外部性理论研究述评

对西方经济学外部性理论的形成及演进过程进行了回溯,阐释了西方经济学家对外部性的分类和计量的研究成果,在此基础上对外部性理论的研究内容、方法及外部性理论在未来的发展趋势作了简要的评介.     

Alternative Sustainability Criteria,Externalities, and Welfare in a Simple Agroecosystem Model: A Numerical Analysis

Using the numerical technique of value iteration, this paper imposes several sustainability constraints on a simple multi-sector agroecosystem model, and provides analysis of the costs tradeoffs of the product and externality is insufficient for intergenerationally equitable welfare paths, while sustaining a physical resource over time in the interests of equitability can result in a less equitable distribution of welfare across generations. Furthermore, a value sustainability constraint imposed on the social welfare maximization problem acts as a welfare transfer mechanism from the productive sector to the sector affected by the externality, but implies growth in profits for the productive sector and declining utility for the non-productive sector.     

The Augmented Solow Model with Mincerian Schooling and Externalities

Abstract. We combine the augmented Solow model with the Mincer equation to derive a specification that identifies an education externality within a production function framework. The previous empirical literature has not reached a consensus about the size of the education externality, which is given by the difference between the microeconomic and the macroeconomic return to education. Relative to our benchmark value that is based on a parameterization of the derived specification, we find that the estimated education externality is too large when the empirical model is not properly restricted, and appears to be absent when all control variables of the empirical model are properly accounted for. We note that the absence of an education externality is difficult to reconcile with observed levels of education subsidies for efficiency reasons.     

A Tractable Alternative to Cobb-Douglas Utility for Imperfect Competition

This paper proposes a tractable alternative to Cobb-Douglas utility to resolve the problems of lack of reservation price and income effects in demand functions derived from Cobb-Douglas utility or quasilinear utility. Another advantage of this althernative is that it provides a closed-form general equilibrium in the case where some industries are monopoly while others are imperfectly competitive.     

Taxation In The Two‐Sector Neoclassical Growth Model With Sector‐Specific Externalities And Endogenous Labour Supply*

This paper examines the long‐run impacts of selective (or sector‐specific) commodity, payroll, and profit taxes in a two‐sector endogenous growth model with sector‐specific production externalities, in which one sector produces consumption goods and the other produces investment goods. The novelty of the model is that it allows not only for endogenous labour supply but also for the intersectoral allocation of resources, which may together lead to indeterminacy. We analytically show that the stability properties of the long‐run equilibrium critically affect the long‐run effects of these selective taxes, which may reverse the standard results of the growth effects of distortionary taxes.     

A Study of Collusion in First-Price Auctions

This paper examines the bidding for school milk contracts in Florida and Texas during the 1980s. In both states firms were convicted of bid-rigging. The data and legal evidence suggest that the cartels in the two states allocate contracts in different ways: One cartel divides the market among members, while the other cartel also uses side payments to compensate members for refraining from bidding. We show that both forms of cartel agreements are almost optimal, provided the number of contracts is sufficiently large.
In the auction the cartel bidder may face competition from non-cartel bidders. The presence of an optimal cartel induces an asymmetry in the auction. The selected cartel bidder is bidding as a representative of a group and has on average a lower cost than a non-cartel bidder. The data support the predicted equilibrium bidding behaviour in asymmetric auctions in accordance with optimal cartels.     

A structural model of competing sellers: Auctions and posted prices

In an original data set of goods listed for sale online, I observe that both auctions and posted prices are popular with buyers and sellers in the compact-disc market. To explain why these two mechanisms coexist, I estimate a structural model of competing sellers who differ in the value of their outside options. Buyers are allowed to value auctioned and posted-price goods differently but the estimated value distributions suggest that differences across buyers do not explain the mechanism coexistence that I observe. In contrast, differences across sellers' outside options are important: the value of the outside option segments the market with high outside-option sellers choosing to post a fixed price. There are two key forces at work that drive this empirical result. First, competition between sellers favors coexistence over an auction-only or a posted-price-only marketplace because sellers prefer to be in a market with fewer rivals. Second, sellers with more valuable outside options prefer the posted-price mechanism because posted-price goods sell less often than auctioned goods but at a higher price. As a result, a larger outside option reduces the loss from not selling and favors the posted-price mechanism.