bidding behaviour in multi unit auctions an experimental investigation we present laboratory experiments of five different multi unit auction mechanisms two units of a homogeneous object were auctioned off among two bidders with flat demand for two units we test whether expected demand reduction occurs in open and sealed bid uniform price auctions we also test revenue equivalence for these auctions as well as for the ausubel the vickrey and the discrim inatory sealed bid auction furthermore we compare the five mechanisms with respect to the efficient allocation of the units auctions play a more and more important role in everyday business life an increasing number of important markets are organised as auctions and auction design is probably one of the most successful applications of economic theory to practice among the prominent examples are the spectrum auctions in the us and in europe treasury auctions in the us the design of electricity spot markets oil and timber sales as well as the massive use of procurement auctions both by the public sector and by private firms the spectrum auctions across the world have demonstrated that carefully designed auctions raise high revenues and often succeed in implementing efficient allocations

household fuelwood demand and supply in nepal s tarai and mid hills choice between cash outlays and labor opportunity abstract subsistence households are a leading source of deforestation and their consumption of fuelwood in particular is important in many developing countries yet the empirical economic examinations of fuelwood consumption are sparse particularly for rural areas where the deforestation occurs and we would argue that forest policy is often designed without a good understanding of the potential responses of subsistence households to the new policy this paper addresses these issues with household evidence from the two major populated regions of nepal market prices labor opportunities the availability of substitutes and measure of access to the basic resource are the most reliable predictive variables for fuelwood consumption and production there are however regional differences and important distinctions between the elasticities of fuelwood collecting or purchasing households with respect to these predictive variables the difference between collecting and purchasing households is notable it recommends forestry policies that target the labor opportunity and the physical resource in regions where collecting households dominate and policies that affect the fuelwood market itself in regions where purchasing households are important a second interesting finding is that fuelwood is relatively scarcer prices are higher in the mid hills and both collecting and purchasing households in this region are beginning to respond to deforestation by using their own land for fuelwood production

a demand scenario based fuelwood supply chain a conceptual model abstract fuelwood is one of the main fuels for heating in many countries as the price of fuelwood is relative low comparing to oil or gas demand for fuelwood rises over the years a supply chain is considered by different nodes that are essential for some operations concerning transportation and production due to the sensitive nature of the forest which is the production plant in the examined supply chain certain restrictions concerning the production and distribution of fuelwood should be taken into account a more environment oriented production model should be developed taking into consideration the sustainable management of the forests for this purpose a mixed integer linear programming milp model is considered in modeling uncertainty for fuelwood demand moreover the minimization of the overall operations cost is examined under different fuelwood demand representations using lagrangean relaxation algorithm

revenue and efficiency in multi unit uniform price auctions abstract this paper analyzes efficiency in a uniform price multi unit auction with a positive reservation price i demonstrate that the reservation price is an important policy tool that may increase efficiency or welfare in multi unit uniform price auctions i show that the higher the reservation price is the higher is the seller s revenue and the higher is the efficiency of a final allocation of units that could be attained in a multi unit uniform price auction the reservation price increases the bidder s equilibrium strategy in a specific way that is inherent to the uniform price auction thus the reservation price effect on efficiency is in contrast to other auction formats e g the reservation price decreases efficiency in the vickrey auction and single unit auctions with symmetric bidders therefore the main result can be added to the list of results from mechanism design and auction theory that fail to extend the single unit single dimensional context to the multi unit multi dimensional one

heating technology and energy use a discrete continuous choice approach to norwegian household energy demand abstract the aim of this paper is to describe the structure of the household s energy demand as a discrete continuous choice and on this basis establish an econometric model suitable for the data available in the norwegian energy surveys the discrete appliance choice is specified as a multinomial logit model with a mixture of appliance attributes operating costs and individual characteristics income housing unit characteristics etc as explanatory variables in the next step the continuous choice of energy use is modelled conditional on the appliance choice the energy prices turn out to be significant both when estimating the appliance choice and the conditional energy demand the estimated price elasticity for energy exceeds minus unity the paper discusses how this relatively strong price response should be interpreted in the context of other econometric analysis with no explicit appliance dependence finally the significance of the many household characteristics at both stages of the model signals a high degree of heterogeneity within the households which justifies the use of detailed micro data in the modelling of the energy demand

multi unit pay your bid auctions with variable awards abstract multi unit auctions in which bidders can win a variable number of units differ significantly from multi unit auctions in which bidders can only win one unit in an independent private values pay your bid auction where bidders may win up to two units we show that first order conditions imply separating and pooling of bids must both occur with positive probability this behavior is not found in multi unit uniform price auctions it also contrasts with asymmetric first price auctions of a single good whose first order conditions are superficially similar a uniform distribution example is analyzed numerically journal of economic literature classification numbers d44 d82 c72

from linear fuel switching to multiple cooking strategies a critique and alternative to the energy ladder model abstract promoting sustainable development requires evaluating the technical and policy options that will facilitate the adoption and use of energy efficient and less polluting cooking stoves and practices the transition from traditional to modern fuels and devices has been explained by the energy ladder model that suggests that with increasing affluence a progression is expected from traditional biomass fuels to more advanced and less polluting fuels in this paper we evaluate the energy ladder model utilizing data from a four year 1992 96 case study of a village in mexico and from a large scale survey from four states of mexico we show that an alternate multiple fuel model of stove and fuel management based on the observed pattern of household accumulation of energy options rather than the simple progression depicted in the traditional energy ladder scenario more accurately depicts cooking fuel use patterns in rural households the multiple fuel model integrates four factors demonstrated to be essential in household decision making under conditions of resource scarcity or uncertainty a economics of fuel and stove type and access conditions to fuels b technical characteristics of cookstoves and cooking practices c cultural preferences and d health impacts this model also allows better estimates of the expected fuelwood demand and indoor air pollution in rural households

the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in the asean 5 countries abstract the objective of this study is to examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for asean 5 countries which includes indonesia malaysia thailand singapore and the philippines for empirical examination annual time series data in the period of 1980 2012 are used the results of johansen co integration test reveal that there exists one co integrating relationship among the variables in case of indonesia malaysia the philippines and singapore the results uncover the existence of two co integrating associations among the variables for thailand the granger causality test suggests that there is no unilateral causality for indonesia as in all the three cases in case of malaysia the economic growth caused energy consumption however no evidence is found for causality either from exports or from gross fixed capital formation to energy consumption while in the cases of thailand and the philippines the direction of causality runs from gross fixed capital formation to energy consumption for singapore energy consumption runs from two sides i e one from exports side and the other from gross fixed capital formation side the findings exhibit that energy consumption has significant and long run relationship to economic growth for almost all asean 5 countries the findings suggest that policy makers need to formulate policies conducive to the energy development which will consequently accelerate sustainable economic growth in asean countries energy development should be based on the existing condition of each country a comprehensive investment framework for renewable energy should also be developed besides maintaining adequate energy inventory the asean countries should strengthen their institutions and capacity as well as cooperation in energy management and development

auctions an introduction abstract this is a detailed introduction to auction theory it begins with a simple analysis of standard auctions and then uses a strikingly simple general solution of symmetric private values auctions to prove the payoff equivalence of many auction rules the basic framework is then modified to admit risk aversion multi unit and repeated auctions as well as collusion then follows an introduction to optimal auctions with and without stochastic entry and to common value auctions and the winner s curse problem the survey closes with a sample of applications from the regulation of natural monopolies to price competition in oligopoly and the government securities market

multiunit pay your bid auction with one dimensional multiunit demands an arbitrary number of units of a good is sold to two bidders through a discriminatory auction the bidders are homogeneous ex ante and their demand functions are two step functions that depend on a single parameter we characterize the symmetric bayesian equilibrium and prove its existence and uniqueness we compare this equilibrium with the equilibrium of the multiunit vickrey auction and with the equilibria of the single unit first price and second price auctions we examine the consequences of bundling all units into one package we study the impacts that variations of the relative supply have on the equilibrium on the bidders average payoffs per unit and on the efficiency of the equilibrium allocation

numerical analysis of asymmetric first price auctions abstract we propose numerical algorithms for solving first price auction problems where bidders draw independent valuations from heterogeneous distributions the heterogeneity analyzed in this work is what might naturally emerge when subsets of distributionally homogeneous bidders collude bid functions and expected revenues are calculated for two special cases extensions to more general asymmetric first price auctions are discussed journal of economic literature classification numbers d44 c63 c72 d82

an econometric analysis of residential consumption of fuelwood in a mountainous prefecture of northern greece abstract biomass is a renewable energy source of increasing importance especially since the energy policies of countries today are largely focused on renewable energy it is a renewable energy source with significant potential to contribute to the energy needs of modern society both for developing and developed countries around the world one very important source of biomass is wood and fuelwood in particular this article aims at providing an empirical analysis of household fuelwood consumption and the determinants of the choice to use the specific energy for heating and cooking in a district of northern greece in the current empirical analysis several household fuelwood consumption models are employed such as glm tobit and heckman regression based techniques the results show that household sociological and economical characteristics as well as more general environmental issues are suitable to explain differences towards fuelwood consumption for space heating and cooking we additionally evaluate the household fuelwood consumption for heating through the statistical analyses conducted

trade and consumption of energy varieties empirical analysis of selected west africa economies abstract this paper examined the relationship between consumption of energy varieties total electricity and road transport and trade export and import in selected west african countries data spanning 1971 to 2010 was used to estimate vector error correction models vecm for 6 countries based on data availability empirical analysis showed that there is insignificant linkage between consumption of energy varieties and export of benin however there is a one way positive linkage running from energy varieties to import of the country for cote d ivoire energy varieties have insignificant relationship with export and import however while inverse relationship runs from export to both electricity and road transport energy consumption positive direct association runs from import to total energy and transport energy consumption with respect to ghana positive causality runs from electricity and road transport energy consumption to export however there is a significant positive feedback effect between import and electricity as well as road transport energy consumption for nigeria there is a significant positive link running from both electricity and road transport energy consumption to export and import senegal s case suggests a bi directional inverse linkage between export and total energy consumption for togo both export and import are insignificantly linked with energy use these mixed findings generate different policy implications across the selected west african countries which are well articulated in the paper

comparative statics in first price auctions abstract two bidders take part in a first price auction we show that if a bidder s valuation distribution increases stochastically so will his bid distribution for every possible valuation his opponent will bid higher and the change is beneficial to the auctioneer we generalize our results to the asymmetric setting with n bidders and no more than two different valuation distributions journal of economic literature classification number d44

an efficient ascending bid auction for multiple objects when bidders exhibit multi unit demands standard auction methods generally yield inefficient outcomes this article proposes a new ascending bid auction for homogeneous goods such as treasury bills or telecommunications spectrum the auctioneer announces a price and bidders respond with quantities items are awarded at the current price whenever they are clinched and the price is incremented until the market clears with private values this dynamic auction yields the same outcome as the sealed bid vickrey auction but has advantages of simplicity and privacy preservation with interdependent values this auction may retain efficiency whereas the vickrey auction suffers from a generalized winner s curse

equilibrium in sealed high bid auctions there is a voluminous theoretical literature on sealed high bid auctions auctions in which bids are sealed and the high bidder pays his bid see for example vickrey 1961 myerson 1981 riley and samuelson 1981 milgrom and weber 1982 matthews 1983 maskin and riley 1984 holt 1980 cox smith and walker 1988 a critical property on which this literature relies is the existence of equilibrium in which buyers bidding strategies are monotonic in their types this enables the analyst to perform comparative statics as the distribution of types changes and to compare the welfare properties of the high bid auction with those of other auction institutions one case in which the existence of monotonic equilibrium is readily established is that in which buyers types are distributed smoothly independently and symmetrically in this case there exists a symmetric equilibrium one in which all bidders share the same bidding behaviour as a function of their valuations and this bid function is the solution to a first order differential equation

random preferences towards bioenergy environmental externalities a case study of woody biomass based electricity in the southern united states article i nfo this paper contrasts alternate methodological approaches of investigating public preferences the random parameter logit rpl where tastes and preferences of respondents are assumed to be heterogeneous and the conditional logit cl approach where tastes and preferences remain fixed for individuals we conducted a choice experiment to assess preferences for woody biomass based electricity in arkansas florida and virginia reduction of co2 emissions and improvement of forest habitat by decreasing risk of wildfires and pest outbreaks were presented to respondents as attributes of using green electricity the results indicate that heterogeneous preferences might be a better fit for assessing preferences for green electricity all levels of both attributes were positive contributors to welfare but they were no statistically significant respondents expressed a positive mean marginal willingness to pay wtp for each attribute level the total wtp for green electricity per kilowatt hour was 0 049 kwh or 40 5 per capita year 1 when converted into future total annual expenditures

gaming against managers in incentive systems experimental results with chinese students and chinese managers we examine strategic interactions between firms and planners in china comparing behavior between i students and managers with field experience with this situation ii standard versus increased monetary incentives and iii sessions conducted in context making explicit reference to interactions between planners and managers and those without any such references the dynamics of play are similar across treatments with play only gradually and incompletely converging on a pooling equilibrium a fivefold increase in incentives significantly increases initial levels of strategic play games played in context generated greater levels of strategic play for managers with minimal impact on students

asymptotic efficiency for discriminatory private value auctions we consider discriminatory auctions for multiple identical units of a good players have private values possibly for multiple units none of the usual assumptions about symmetry of players distributions over values or symmetry of equilibrium play are made because of this equilibria will typically involve inefficient allocations equilibria also become very difficult to solve for using an approach which does not depend on explicit equilibrium calculations we show that such auctions become arbitrarily close to efficient as the number of players and possibly the number of objects grows large and provide a simple characterization of limit equilibria

socio economic determinants of energy consumption an empirical survey for greece abstract the present study identifies and evaluates the macroeconomic factors that determine energy consumption in greece this study is based on annual time series data covering the period ranging from 1975 2013 the augmented dickey fuller adf test and kpss test are employed in order to test stationarity of the data confirming that all the variables are i 1 within the next step of the methodology we employed a vecm model in order to detect causality among the variables through the granger causality test similarly the impulse response analysis provides that urbanization infrastructure trade income population growth and foreign direct investment are the main determinants of energy consumption in greece during the period surveyed the findings suggest that in order to fulfill the energy demand in the country the decision makers need to formulate energy policy in favor of enlarging the supply of energy and especially renewable energy to foster the process of economic growth and development especially in the times of crisis the particular determinants are a necessity to initiate economic growth

a two stage sequential auction with multi unit demands abstract working within the independent private values paradigm i examine a sequence of two second price auctions where individual bidders have diminishing marginal valuations equilibria are characterized for complete and incomplete informational settings when information is complete allocations can be inefficient and price sequences are constant or decreasing however when information is incomplete and symmetric equilibrium behavior produces efficient outcomes and an expectation of increasing prices these divergent findings are reconciled using an argument based on ex ante bidder asymmetry that can also explain the declining price anomaly finally comparisons to other auctions are made in terms efficiency and revenue generation journal of economic literatureclassification number d44

first price auctions in the asymmetric n bidder case i consider the first price auction when the bidders valuations may be differently distributed i show that every bayesian equilibrium is an essentially pure equilibrium formed by bid functions whose inverses are solutions of a system of differential equations with boundary conditions i then prove the existence of an equilibrium i prove its uniqueness when the valuation distributions have a mass point at the lower extremity of the support i give sufficient conditions for uniqueness when every valuation distribution is one of two atomless distributions i establish inequalities between equilibrium strategies when relations of stochastic dominance exist between valuation distributions

on the existence of pure and mixed strategy nash equilibria in discontinuous games a game is better reply secure if for every nonequilibrium strategy x and every payoff vector limit u resulting from strategies approaching x some player i has a strategy yielding a payoff strictly above u i even if the others deviate slightly from x if strategy spaces are compact and convex payoffs are quasiconcave in the owner s strategy and the game is better reply secure then a pure strategy nash equilibrium exists better reply security holds in many economic games it also permits new results on the existence of symmetric and mixed strategy nash equilibria

protest responses in contingent valuation a significant number of respondents to contingent valuation surveys tend to either state a zero bid or refuse to state a bid at all for reasons associated with the process of valuation these protest responses are routinely removed from contingent valuation samples because it is assumed that they are not indicative of respondents true values the censoring of protest responses has led to the emergence of a definitional controversy one view is that the definition of protest responses and the rules for censoring them are dependent on whether the practitioner conceives of the contingent valuation survey as a market or as a referendum however what is not acknowledged is the possibility that protest responses and their meaning may vary according to the type of good being valued the elicitation format and the interaction between these elements and external factors this potential renders the development of unambiguous rules for censoring protest responses difficult moreover when willingness to pay is viewed as a behavioural intention it becomes important to determine what the responses actually mean this approach does not assume an interpretative position a priori against which the responses should be judged but seeks to inform an existing understanding which is inadequate

examining risk preferences under high monetary incentives experimental evidence from the people s republic of china several experimental sessions were conducted to elicit certainty equivalents for a sequence of lotteries involving real monetary outcomes the opportunity to conduct sessions in the people s republic of china afforded the ability to offer very large monetary incentives relative to subjects living costs in the highest payoff condition subjects earned three times their normal monthly revenue in the course of a two hour experiment results indicate a statistically significant impact of the level of monetary incentives on revealed risk preferences however even under extreme monetary incentives subjects demanded amounts well in excess of expected value for low probability gain prospects copyright 1992 by american economic association

household energy choices and fuelwood consumption an econometric approach using french data this study proposes an econometric analysis of household fuelwood demand in france the choice concerning the energy used for heating is modeled stressing the combination between one type of energy used as a main source and another one used as a back up this endogenous decision has an impact on fuelwood consumption and is taken into account to avoid biased estimates of price and income elasticities the results show that the choice of energy mix is determined by the income and the socio economic characteristics of households and that fuelwood consumption is price sensitive in the case where wood is the main source of energy

assessment of reasonably achievable ghg emission reduction target in lithuanian households abstract lithuania has developed several important climate change mitigation policy documents however there are no attempts in lithuania to develop local climate change mitigation policies or to decentralize climate change mitigation policy the aim of the paper is to analyse climate change mitigation policies in households the paper presents the framework for the assessment of reasonably achievable ghg emission reduction raer potential in households based on behavioral changes related to energy consumption the paper presents the results of empirical application of developed framework in lithuanian households community based social marketing approach was implemented and ghg emission reduction potential was assessed in focus groups of kaunas region county during preparation of sustainable development strategy and long term strategic development plan for kaunas region county

factors determining energy consumption evidence from indonesia malaysia and thailand abstract the aim of this study is to verify empirically the impact of various factors on energy consumption in three asean countries namely indonesia malaysia and thailand over the period 1980 to 2012 after using sundry appropriate diagnostic tests for checking time series data the method of least square as an analytical technique is used for parameters estimation the findings validate that fdi inflows economic growth trade openness and human development index have positive and statistically significant impacts on energy consumption the other variable urbanization has positive and statistically significant impacts on energy consumption for thailand and indonesia only while the empirical results reveals that population growth rate has a positive and statistically significant relationship with energy consumption only in the case of malaysia so in the light of determinations of the study the policy implication is that energy policy needs to be orientated in favor of expanding the supply of energy to reach an enhanced degree of sustainable economic growth and development