A Consistent Econometric Test for Bid Interdependence in Repeated Second-Price Auctions with Posted Prices

In repeated second-price experimental auctions, the winning bid is normally posted after each round. The posting of these winning prices after each round can result in bids submitted in later rounds to be interdependent with posted prices from earlier rounds. Several approaches in the past have tried to scrutinize their experimental data for value interdependence by regressing bids on lagged market prices or lagged bids and ignoring the inherent endogeneity problem. This paper introduces a formal test for bid interdependence in repeated second-price auctions with posted prices using a dynamic panel model. We then apply this test to formally check the presence of bid interdependence in three datasets used in previous studies.     

Learning in Sequential Auctions

The importance of information transmission and learning is studied in a model of a sequential auction in which bidders have independent private values. In the course of the auction, information about the bidders' values becomes available as winning bids are revealed. From this, bidders learn about their opponents' types. A more subtle effect of information is that bidders anticipate the generation of information and take this into account in the first auction. The equilibrium in this model is contrasted to a scenario in which bidders are unaware of informational effects. It is shown that bidders who are aware of informational effects place lower bids on average and hence have higher payoffs. Properties of the equilibrium price path are studied. Regardless of the outcome of the first auction, the second price is expected to be equal to the first price. Despite this, the probability of a decreasing price sequence depends on the information generated in the first auction. Finally, it is shown that a simultaneous auction, in which informational effects are absent, yields the same expected final allocation as the equilibrium.     

Selective Entry in Highway Procurement Auctions

When participating in an auction is costly, a potential bidder has to decide whether to enter the auction or not. The extent to which the potential bidders know their private cost before making their entry decisions determines how selective the entry process is. Endogenous selective entry is common in many auctions and it has important implications for designing auctions, in particular, choosing the bid discount policy that is frequently used in public procurements to achieve distributional goals of the government. Prior empirical studies of the bid preferences were based on frameworks that either did not explicitly model endogenous participation or assumed endogenous, but non-selective participation. This study empirically investigated whether the entry process is selective in the highway procurement auctions run by the California Department of Transportation. To this end, the asymmetric affiliated-signal model was adapted to permit endogenous selective entry. Model parameters, including entry costs and distributions of construction costs for regular and fringe companies, were estimated nonparametrically. The results show evidence favoring selective entry of the fringe firms and imply that the level of bid discount required to achieve the procurement buyer’s policy objective may be lower than what is previously found in the literature under the assumption of non-selective entry.

     

Rational Reserve Pricing in Sequential Auctions

A durable asset is sold in a sealed-bid first price auction. The seller sets an undisclosed reservation price. The seller has no prior information respecting the private valuations of the bidders. If no bid exceeds the reservation price, the asset is sequentially auctioned until it is sold. A rational seller will design an intertemporal series of reservation prices that maximize the discounted value of the transaction price. To accomplish this, the seller uses the history of unsuccessful bids to estimate the probability density functions governing the maximum bids at each hypothetical future auction date.     

The Rise of Multiunit Firms in U.S. Manufacturing

The modern multiunit enterprise has been touted by historians and economic historians as a major and important phase of organizational change and a significant source of growth. However, most studies concerning this phenomenon have been based on a sample of the very largest enterprises. This article utilizes data on a complete sample of firms provided by the pioneering works of Thorp (1924) and Thorp et al. (1941) and the Census Bureau's Enterprise Statistics and other census sources to document and examine the rise of modern multiunit firms in U.S. manufacturing over the twentieth century. The analysis of the data suggests that the modern multiunit firm arose to take advantage of economies of marketing rather than those of scale and scope.     

国有住宅用地“双限”拍卖的竞价博弈模型

本文把国有住宅用地的“双限”拍卖构造成不完全信息竞价博弈模型,把房地产开发企业的资金机会成本和资金效率作为企业的类型。在一般效用函数形式下,本文求解了这个博弈的Bayesian Nash均衡。在均衡条件下,竞价企业的策略是企业类型参数的单调函数。     

拍卖机制中最优保留价比较分析

在基准模型中,讨论了拍卖商期望收益最大化的最优保留价设置问题。在拍卖机制中,公开与不公开最 优保留价的两种情况下,比较了投标商的投标策略和拍卖商获得的最大期望收益与投标商估价区间的关系。     

The Determinants of Price in Internet Auctions of Used Cars

This study analyzes how auction, seller, and product factors influence the price premium in an eBay used car auction market. In auctions with at least one bid, the reputation of the seller, title status, and the time the auction ended influenced the price premium on the highest bid. For auctions that resulted in a sale, cars with clear title and dealers were able to secure significantly greater price premiums, but seller reputation had no significant effect. Using a binary logit model, cars had a greater probability of selling if the seller had a better reputation. The quality of the presentation and number of pictures did not enhance the price premium in any of the models.

Exclusive Dealing through Resellers in Auctions with Stochastic Bidder Participation

This paper demonstrates that a seller prefers to exclude final consumers from an auction and sell only to resellers when these resellers can gain access, at a cost, to a sufficiently bigger market than the seller himself. The intuition is that resellers recoup their expenses for marketing the item by reselling it to final consumers. If some consumers participate in the first auction and are outbid by the resellers, then their values for the item are relatively low. Outbidding part of their customer base is “bad news” for the resellers, and this depresses their bids when consumers compete with them. The socially optimal and revenue-maximizing choices of auction format may not coincide: Restricting participation of consumers may be socially optimal but privately suboptimal and vice-versa. The results suggest that (i) the exclusion of final consumers in some auctions may not be driven by transaction cost considerations, and (ii) sellers should not necessarily sell directly to consumers, even though new technologies allow them to do so at essentially zero cost, unless they can access a sufficiently large portion of the market.     

Information Effects in Uniform Price Multi‐Unit Dutch Auctions

We design a multi‐unit descending‐price (Dutch) auction mechanism that has applications for resource allocation and pricing problems. We address specific auction design choices by theoretically and experimentally determining optimal information disclosure along two dimensions. Bidders are either informed of the number of bidders in the auction, or know that it is one of two possible sizes; they also either know the number of units remaining for sale or are unaware of how many units have been taken by other bidders. We find that revealing group size decreases bids, and therefore revenue, if units remaining are not shown. When group size is unknown the price also falls if the number of units remaining is revealed. The most efficient and largest revenue outcome occurs when bidders are not provided information on either group size or units remaining. These laboratory results conform to some directional predictions from our theory, although overbidding is common.     

Impacts of Foreign Exchange Auctions on the Informal Market Rate in Myanmar

Since the abolition of the official peg and the introduction of a managed float in April 2012, the Central Bank of Myanmar has operated the daily auctions of foreign exchange aimed at smoothing exchange rate fluctuations. Despite the reforms, however, informal trading of foreign exchange remains pervasive. Using the daily informal exchange rate and Central Bank auction data, this study examines the impacts of auctions on the informal rate. Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models indicate that the auctions did not reduce the conditional variance of the informal rate returns. Overall, the auctions have only a quite modest impact on the informal exchange rate.     

2009楼市之金木水火土

2009年的房地产市场,我想用五个字来概括：金木水火土。当然,我不是大仙也不是半仙,不敢从哲学、中医学、占卜等方面用五行八卦来解读世态。我只是望文生义来“借读”一下房地产的2009年。     

人力资源能力建设受到世界各国空前关注

随着人类社会过渡到以知识为基础的知识经济时代，人力资源的重要性已超过自然资源和资本，成为第一战略资源。美国著名经济学家舒尔茨指出：“人类的未来并不完全取决于空间、能源和耕地，而是更多地依靠人类智慧的开发。”英国首相布莱尔说，在现代经济中，知识、技能和技术倍受重视，政府必须对劳动者的教育与技能投资。澳大利亚政府官员反复强调，人才对于发展知识经济非常重要，人才有利于确保澳智力资源和知识的基础，确保最大程度地实现创新，没有人才，澳大利亚就没有远见，没创意，也就没有科学、技术与工程基础。美国商务部技术政…     

春联进万家 隆冬有温暖

2011年1月10日,在江北观音桥步行街,数百人围聚在两颗大树之间的横幅下,将近十个书写台围绕得水泄不通。在外围的花台边,广场上,三五成群的人们兴高采烈地欣赏着墨汁没干的鲜红春联,品评着书法家刚劲有力的字体,盘算着马上回家喜洋洋地贴到大门上,给隆冬的季节增添一份暖意。     

让每个库区孩子自强不息

三峡库区有着深厚的文化底蕴,峡江人具有吃苦耐劳、豪爽刚毅、勇于奉献的文化性格。在三峡大移民的伟大实践中,库区又孕育了可歌可泣的三峡移民精神。这些都是我们推动发展的宝贵精神财富。不断扩大典型人物和事迹的社会影响力,逐步把少数典型人物自强不息、开拓开放的思想和行为变成库区的一种风尚。可以考虑组织力量编写库区乡土教材,使典型人物和事迹进入课堂,让库区的娃娃从小就树立"自强不息、开拓开放"的强烈意识,成长为三峡库区人文精神的传承者,成长为库区美好未来的建设者和创造者。 --摘自汪洋《在市委二届九次全委会上的讲话》     

Reservation Values and Regret in Laboratory First‐Price Auctions: Context and Bidding Behavior

Recent articles hypothesize that an asymmetry in regret motivates aggressive bidding in laboratory first‐price auctions. Subjects emphasize potential earnings foregone from being outbid. Proposed motivators of this asymmetry include the one‐to‐one relationship in the auction between winning and positive earnings and the ex post knowledge that bidders who do not win the auction know they earned less than the winning bidder. We design a novel implementation of the first‐price auction environment in which these characteristics are not present, while leaving unchanged the expected‐earnings maximizing bidding strategy against any fixed beliefs about the bidding behavior of others. Bidding is significantly less aggressive in this treatment. These findings support the hypothesis that aggressive bidding is motivated in part by features of the protocol for incentivizing subjects that are not essential to the auction environment.     

基于资源枯竭城市转型中产业集群发展的人才集群构建研究

通过对资源枯竭城市产业集群发展中人才资源现状的研究,分析了资源枯竭地区的人才资源的特点及其成因,运用产、学、研相结合的思路与对策,实施合理的人才培训机制,为资源枯竭型城市营造起一个良好的人才资源环境。