declining values and the afternoon effect evidence from art auctions we study the order of sale in art auctions the final bid relative to the auctioneer s estimated price declines throughout the course of an auction a theoretical model shows that in an auction ordered by declining valuation even in the presence of risk neutral strategic bidders the price received relative to the estimate for later items in an auction should be less than the price relative to the estimate for earlier items furthermore ordering heterogeneous items by value maximizes revenue for the auctioneer

what explains wage gaps between farm and city exploring the todaro model with american evidence 1890 1941 nominal wage gaps between farm and city employment are one of the most pervasive aspects of modern economic growth so much so that they have become a key stylized fact of development economics indeed a good portion of the literature on the third world has focused on this problem at length both in terms of labor market behavior and in terms of policy formation in the face of factor market distortions yet wage gaps are not simply an institutional peculiarity of newly industrializing third world countries since they seem to have been even greater among nineteenthand twentieth century western nations while unskilled full time nominal city wages are about 41 higher than farm wages in the contemporary third world they were about 51 higher among late nineteenth century industrializers they were even higher in england in the 1830s about 73 2 furthermore the evidence suggests that these wage gaps vary substantially over time they rose from 29 to 41 in the american north between the antebellum and postbellum periods and were about 50 by the mid 1890s in the united states as a whole a figure that reached an all time u s high of about 65 by the late 1930s 3 there are three questions that these wage gaps raise not just one first would these nominal full time wage gaps disappear if they were properly measured proper measurement would include the fact that cities are more costly places to live that cities may have greater disamenities that farmers also make in kind payments to their workers and that farm laborers suffer seasonal underemployment elsewhere

the ten commandments for organizing a conference once upon a time an economist a head of department and a phd student were walking along a river and came upon a dusty bottle sealed with an ancient cork on removing the cork to check if any wine were left they were amazed to see a fierce genie burst from the bottle and bow before them the genie offered each of the three a wish in gratitude for freedom the economist asked to be responsible for organizing the most successful conference in the history of the universe the head of department asked not to be involved with it in any way and the phd student asked to be on the local organizing committee instantly the three wishes were granted at one time or another during their careers most economists heads of departments and phd students will have one or more opportunities to be involved in organizing a conference as the opportunities for finding a grateful genie with a graduate diploma in conference organization are generally quite limited the most successful conference ever imagined typically relies on foresight skill hard work and divine intervention in my experience those who have survived organizing a conference have adhered to the following ten commandments

a non expected utility model and its application in practical auctions this article presents a non expected utility decision model which is nonlinear in the winning probabilities the model not only explicitly expresses bidders attitudes to risk but also addresses t

north american migration returns to skill border effects and mobility costs utilizing a utility maximizing roy type discrete choice model of worker location in canadian provinces and u s states that incorporates returns to skill amenities fixed costs distance langua

tastes and technology in a two country model of the business cycle explaining international trade on international financial markets allows people to insure country specific risk and smooth consumption intertemporally equilibrium models of business cycles with trade on global financial markets typically yield international consumption correlations near one and excessive volatility of investment the authors incorporate nontraded goods in the model and find that the implications for aggregate consumption investment and the trade balance are consistent with business cycle properties of industrialized countries however the model driven by technology shocks alone yields counterfactual implications for comovements between consumption and prices at the sectoral level taste shocks produce price quantity relationships more consistent with the data copyright 1995 by american economic association

partnerships and double auctions with interdependent valuations in a symmetric independent private values setting a sealed bid double auction dissolves a partnership efficiently this well known result remains valid in a model with interdependent valuations however if common values components are large agents might prefer not to participate in a double auction therefore a simple extention of the rules of double auctions is suggested that ensures participation even though these modified double auctions are not incentive efficient they still realize gains from trade and can be implemented without knowledge about the specifications of the model

auction guarantees for works of art abstract this paper addresses the question of whether auction guarantees change the bidding environment and whether they cause a change in price once the value of an item is taken into account we analyze both the cases of third party guarantees and in house guarantees we use two datasets one of christie s and sotheby s contemporary and impressionist evening sales from january 2010 to february 2012 and another larger dataset consisting of all items auctioned at christie s from 2001 to may 2011 while more expensive items are more likely to have guarantees we find little empirical evidence to suggest an effect on price from the guarantee itself once the value of the item is taken into account

takeover contests toeholds and deterrence we consider a setting in which two potential buyers one with a prior toehold and one without compete in a takeover modeled as an ascending auction with participating costs the toeholder is more aggressive during the takeover process because she is also a seller of her own shares the non toeholder anticipates this extra aggressiveness of the toeholder thus he is deterred from participating unless he has a high valuation for the target company this leads to large inefficiency losses for many configurations expected target returns are first increasing then decreasing in the size of the toehold

commodity trade and international risk sharing how much do financial markets matter abstract this paper evaluates the social gains from international risk sharing in some simple general equilibrium models with output uncertainty a simulation model calibrated to selected moments of u s and japanese data estimates the incremental loss from a ban on international portfolio diversification to be on the order of 0 20 percent of output per year even the theoretical gains from asset trade may disappear under alternative sets of assumptions on preferences and technology the paper argues that the small magnitude of potential trade gains may help explain the apparently inconsistent findings of empirical studies on the degree of international capital mobility

does the sun shine on art prices this paper examines how variation in mood influences subjective risk and hence auction prices for art in london during the period 1990 2007 the private value of an object is closely related to taste and mood which is proxied for by the variation in weather using a unique data set that includes presale estimates for paintings sold through sotheby s and christie s auction houses as well as weather data for london from the british atmospheric data centre we find that the lower part of the price distribution is populated with paintings with a relative high private value whereas in the upper part prices are driven primarily by the common value characteristics our findings have important implications for collectors and investors in the art market

dynamic pricing behavior in perishable goods markets evidence from secondary markets for major league baseball tickets sellers of perishable goods increasingly use dynamic pricing strategies as technology makes it easier to change prices and track inventory this paper tests how accurately theoretical models of dynamic pricing describe sellers behavior in secondary markets for event tickets a classic example of a perishable good it shows that the simplest dynamic pricing models describe very accurately both the pricing problem faced by sellers and how they behave explaining why sellers cut prices dramatically by 40 percent or more as an event approaches the estimates also imply that dynamic pricing is valuable raising the average seller s expected payoff by around 16 percent

a decision support framework for evaluating revenue performance in sequential purchase contexts abstract this paper studies the product ordering problem in sequential purchase contexts where sellers aim to maximize their revenue faced with budget constrained buyers we propose a multi layered decision support framework that combines empirical data with simulation optimization and econometric methods to address this problem our framework allows sellers to i compare revenue performances of limited information sequencing strategies ii quantify benchmark revenue levels that can be achieved via the optimal sequence based on detailed buyer information iii determine the costs of limited information and strategic buyers to the seller and iv identify the moderators of sequencing strategy performance we illustrate our framework through two applications in a business to business used car auction setting contrary to previous studies reporting practitioners tendency to sequence items from the lowest value to the highest our results suggest that the best performing limited information sequencing strategy depends on buyers bidding behavior we also find that the revenue difference between the optimal sequence and a limited information sequencing strategy can be substantial our results show that a significant portion of this revenue difference is associated with the seller s limited information on buyers budgets and product valuations our applications also provide various sensitivity analyses and develop new propositions on the moderators of the relationship between the seller s revenue and sequencing strategies

what s an economics seminar worth information authors and organizers should know es de lille abstract this paper is an empirical study of the publication records of communications to a weekly seminar continued from 1997 we look at the quality of publications and also at the determinants of publications our results offer lessons for both presenters and organizers of research seminars in academia

asymmetric price benefits auctions abstract this paper studies the performance of two auction procedures for allocating the assets of a dissolving partnership when partners valuations for the assets are independent and asymmetrically distributed with one partner reputed to be more interested in the assets to be divided we provide results on existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium induced by these auctions comparative statics are developed especially the differences between relative efficiency and revenue from the two auctions journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d39 d44 d52 d74 d82

initial shareholdings and overbidding in takeover contests within the context of takeovers this paper shows that in private value auctions the optimal individually rational strategy for a bidder with partial ownership of the item is to overbid i e to bid more than his valuation this strategy however can lead to i an inefficient outcome and ii the winning bidder making a net loss further the overbidding result implies that the presence of a large shareholder increases the bid premium in single bidder takeovers at the expense of reducing the probability of the takeover actually occurring

sequential auctions of heterogeneous objects abstract we consider sequential second price auctions in which heterogeneous objects are sold to bidders with unit demand and a single dimensional type we show that a symmetric increasing equilibrium exists if objects are ordered in terms of dispersiveness of value distributions equilibrium price declines when objects are equivalent on average and additional conditions hold

catalogue vs order of sale effects in sequential auctions theory and evidence from a rare book sale we examine bidding in a rare book sequential auction that has features of a natural experiment lots were arranged in alphabetical order the reserve set non strategically and half the bids placed by mail in bidders we distinguish between the effects induced by the print order of the catalogue from those by the sequential nature of the sale we document the existence of distinct catalogue effects on prices number of bids and price variability and determine their causes we demonstrate that these catalogue effects also influence floor bidder behaviour we derive a theoretical model that generates key aspects of floor bidder behaviour copyright 2004 royal economic society

how auctions work for wine and art interview auctioneers and even to buy a little wine in the meantime i have also had the opportunity with john abowd 1988 to observe and collect data on the auction sale of impressionist and contemporary paintings this paper reports on some of the empirical regularities that i and others have observed in the actual operation of the auction markets for these items in view of the rich and diverse array of theoretical literature on auctions it seems high time economists began to spell out precisely what facts it is meant to explain 2

terms of trade uncertainty and economic growth abstract this paper examines a stochastic endogenous growth model in which terms of trade uncertainty affects savings and growth the model explains the well known positive link between growth and the mean rate of change of terms of trade and predicts also that terms of trade variability affects growth increased terms of trade variability results in faster or slower growth depending on the degree of risk aversion but in either case it reduces social welfare these growth effects imply that welfare costs of macroeconomic uncertainty are much larger than first thought cross country panel regressions provide strong support for the model s key predictions

retailers and consumers in sequential auctions of collectibles we analyse an independent private value model where heterogeneous bidders compete for objects sold in sequential second price auctions in this heterogeneous game bidders may have differently distributed valuations and some have multi unit demand with decreasing marginal values retailers others have a specific single unit demand consumers by examining equilibrium bidding strategies and price sequences we show that the presence of consumers leads to more aggressive bidding from the retailers on average and heterogeneous bidders is a plausible explanation of the price decline effect the study of the expected revenue of the seller confirms the interest of auctioneers in inviting different types of bidders nous analysons un modele a valeurs privees independantes dans lequel des encherisseurs heterogenes sont en concurrence pour des objets vendus lors d encheres sequentielles au second prix dans ce jeu heterogene les encherisseurs tirent leurs evaluations de distributions qui peuvent differer et certains les revendeurs ont des demandes multi unitaires avec des evaluations marginales decroissantes alors que les autres les consommateurs ont une demande individuelle specifique l examen des strategies d equilibre et des sequences de prix montrent que la presence de consommateurs conduit en moyenne a des encheres plus agressives de la part des revendeurs et que la presence d encherisseurs heterogenes constitue une explication plausible a la decroissance des prix l etude de l esperance du revenu du vendeur confirme l interet des commissaires priseurs a inviter differentes categories d acheteurs

relative wage movements and the distribution of consumption we analyze how relative wage movements among birth cohorts and education groups affected the distribution of household consumption and economic welfare our empirical work draws on the best available cross sectional data sets to construct synthetic panel data on u s consumption labor supply and wages during the 1980s we find that low frequency movements in the cohort education structure of pretax hourly wages among men drove large changes in the distribution of household consumption the results constitute a spectacular failure of between group consumption insurance a failure not explained by existing theories of informationally constrained optimal consumption behavior a welfare analysis indicates that the cost of between group consumption variability is larger than the cost of aggregate consumption variability by two orders of magnitude

endogenous participation in charity auctions abstract data from a recent field experiment suggests that differences in participation rates are responsible for much of the variations in charity auction revenues across formats we provide a theoretical framework for the analysis of this and other related results the model illustrates the limits of previous results that assume full participation and introduces some new considerations to the choice of auction mechanism it also implies however that the data cannot be explained in terms of participation costs alone there must exist mechanism specific obstacles to participation

ten things we should know about time series abstract time series data affect many aspects of our lives this paper highlights 10 things we should all know about time series namely a good working knowledge of econometrics and statistics an awareness of measurement errors testing for zero frequency seasonal and periodic unit roots analysing fractionally integrated and long memory processes estimating varfima models using and interpreting cointegrating models carefully choosing sensibly among univariate conditional stochastic and realized volatility models not confusing thresholds asymmetry and leverage not underestimating the complexity of multivariate volatility models and thinking carefully about forecasting models and expertise

switching costs and sectoral adjustments in general equilibrium with uninsured risk abstract consider a two sector economy subject to recurring technological shocks these affect earnings in the two sectors differently creating incentives for workers to switch occupation switching costs are sunk individuals are risk averse and cannot diversify their income risk we characterize the rational expectations equilibrium of the economy and illustrate the extent to which uncertainty and switching costs increase labor immobility the resulting equilibrium is not even second best optimal even a government that cannot transfer income to achieve insurance can improve matters by speeding up the reallocation of labor across sectors because that reduces relative price variability journal of economic literature classification numbers d52 d62 j62

how big are potential welfare gains from international risksharing abstract there is extensive evidence that risksharing across countries is far from perfect some have attributed this to small benefits from risksharing gains from riskpooling that have been reported range from negligible to enormous this paper documents to what extent the results are sensitive to the parameterization of preferences the stochastic process of the endowment and its measurement we find that gains from risksharing are quite sizable for realistic assumptions about the underlying factors for oecd countries they are equivalent to a permanent increase in tradables consumption in the range of 1 1 to 3 5 for a 50 year horizon and 2 5 to 7 4 for a 100 year horizon

how not to raise money we show that standard winner pay auctions are inept fund raising mechanisms because of the positive externality bidders forgo if they top another s high bid revenues are suppressed as a result and remain finite even when bidders value a dollar donated the same as a dollar kept this problem does not occur in lotteries and all pay auctions where bidders pay irrespective of whether they win we introduce a general class of all pay auctions rank their revenues and illustrate how they dominate lotteries and winner pay formats the optimal fund raising mechanism is an all pay auction augmented with an entry fee and reserve price

absentee bidders and the declining price anomaly in wine auctions the anomaly is concerned with the observation that in multiple item auctions of identical objects prices tend to decline over time i show that in the case of wine auctions which have been analyzed frequently the anomaly is likely to be caused by the fact that most bids are entered by absentees who use nonoptimal bidding strategies therefore wine auctions can hardly be used to illustrate the standard multiple object auction model

terms of trade risk with partial labor mobility abstract we examine the welfare consequences of terms of trade risk in a small open economy in which it is costly for workers to move between sectors relocation costs lead to partial labor mobility sectoral wage gaps and income risk exceeding that of an economy in which relocation is costless using observed wage differentials and standard values for volatility and preferences we find that the welfare cost of partial labor mobility alone is unlikely to be very large even in the absence of self insurance arrangements in addition modest consumption substitution elasticities significantly reduce these welfare costs

the ten commandments for ranking university quality in the rapidly changing world of higher education where increasing emphasis is being placed on the assessment of research and teaching quality as indicators of university quality the key issues that need to be considered have been debated widely in both the private and public sectors the uk and new zealand have undertaken rigorous research performance exercises over an extended period while australia is presently entering a similar phase of assessing research quality however ranking university quality is more general than assessing and ranking research quality alone to date the various stakeholders do not seem to have reached agreement on the most important indicators that need to be addressed in assessing and ranking university quality the ten commandments for ranking university quality address some of the key issues in the ongoing discussions starting with the original set of ten commandments most commandments seem to have been routinely ignored at least in part by all but the most conscientious and religious individuals for this reason the current set should perhaps be seen as guidelines rather than regulations

government procurement and international trade abstract we model the bidding for a government contract in which there is imperfect competition each bidder is better informed about his own costs than either his rival bidders or the government and the distribution of the domestic firms costs differs from the distribution of foreign firms costs because of comparative advantage effects we find that the government minimizes its expected procurement cost by operating a price preference policy not necessarily purchasing from the lowest bidder

unemployment and the structure of labor markets in this book 16 leading economists establish the connection between the forces of the labour market and the persistent but ever changing problem of unemployment these scholars examine structural unemployment in terms of efficiency wage and dual labour market models as well as neo classical theory the effects of the decline of the manufacturing sector the rise in services and the upheaval in the oil industry on our understanding of cyclical and frictional unemployment are incorporated into the analysis an examination of the relationship between structural shifts and unemployment considers the frequency and duration of unemployment of displaced workers the effects of migration caused by structural shifts and the phenomenon of unemployment within particular industries finally the book presents intriguing thoughts on the conduct of labour research and experimental policy analysis the contributors include david m lilien alan b krueger lawrence h summers william t dickens lawrence f katz kevin m murphy robert h topel mark dynarski steven m sheffrin danny steinberg frank a monforte james w albrecht john haltiwanger and mark plant

scale economies and the dynamics of recurring auctions we analyze the dynamics of a game of sequential bidding in the presence of stochastic scale effects either economies or diseconomies of scale we show that economies of scale give rise to declining expected equilibrium prices whereas the converse is not generally true moreover first and second price auctions are not always revenue equivalent economies of scale make second price auctions more profitable for the seller whereas revenue equivalence may be preserved in the case of diseconomies

welfare gains from international risksharing abstract this paper uses consumption data to compute yet unexploited welfare gains that can be achieved through risksharing among twenty oecd countries there is both aggregate national consumption risk and nondiversifiable individual specific risk countries engage in an optimal risksharing arrangement to pool risk associated with the aggregate consumption endowment streams welfare gains are associated with reduced consumption variability and with the international pricing of the consumption streams of individual countries the paper considers the standard vnm time additive preferences as well as nonexpected utility and habit formation preferences large unexploited gains are found under all sets of preferences leading to an international risksharing puzzle

auctions and the price of art the value of most important works of art is established by public auction either directly by an actual sale or indirectly by reference to other sales how the auction system works is thus a critical determinant of how the public s preferences are translated into the evaluation of artistic work the auction system is central in the determination of the incentives for artistic work and the efficiency of the auction system is a key determinant of the cost of creating and distributing works of art this paper contains a review of the burgeoning new research of the last decade that has been designed to shed light on how the art auction system actually works what it indicates about price formation and how well it performs we begin our discussion in section 2 with a short description of the mechanics of the auction system and then organize the remainder of our discussion around two major topics the first topic concerns how auction prices can be used to determine and compare overall price movements within the art market and other markets and the second topic concerns how the auction mechanism influences prices we

auctions with price proportional benefits to bidders after some auctions including amish estate sales and buyer rings knockout auctions each bidder receives a share of the revenue generated by the auction we show that in the symmetric case equilibrium bids in both first price sealed bid auctions and oral auctions increase as each bidder s share increases in the case of independent signals oral auctions result in higher expected equilibrium prices than do first price sealed bid auctions journal of economic literature classification number d44

are art auction estimates biased this article considers whether presale auction estimates are unbiased predictors of price when no sales are considered utilizing a newly constructed sample of over 500 works by eight early twentieth century american artists unbiased presale auction estimates in predicting price while expected are generally not supported in previous work but these studies excepting one do not include no sales in the calculations in order to study the question we employ a standard approach that uses an inverse mills ratio arising from a sample selection probit to correct for selection bias we find that controlling for selection bias presale auction estimates appear to be biased downward and we offer possible reasons for this result

vested interest and biased price estimates evidence from an auction market this study employs a new data set from art auctions to examine the relationship between auctioneer presale price estimates and the long term performance of artworks we find that the price estimates for expensive paintings have a consistent upward bias over a long period of 30 years high estimates at the time of purchase are associated with adverse subsequent abnormal returns moreover the estimation error for individual paintings tends to persist over time these results are consistent with the view that auction house price estimates are affected by agency problems and that

structural adjustment to a terms of trade disturbance the role of relative prices abstract this paper investigates the impact of a terms of trade disturbance on a small economy which responds gradually to changes in relative prices the key intertemporal link is as in dornbusch 1983 between the price of nontraded goods the real interest rate savings and the current account if the traded and nontraded goods are bad substitutes in consumption then an improvement in the terms of trade leads to a transitory current account surplus and conversely international capital mobility reduces the impact of a terms of trade disturbance on relative prices and also reduces the speed with which the economy adjusts to the disturbance

the ten commandments for managing investments abstract stress and distress are unavoidable aspects of dealing with the vagaries of financial markets and financial advisers the purpose of this paper is to try to reduce the discomfort in dealing with investment advisers and to make the journey up and down the financial mountain a little less stressful and more satisfying the commandments deal with defining investment policies precisely diversifying asset classes choosing a consistent benchmark for investment policies structuring precisely the asset allocation process defining risk and risk management procedures monitoring the portfolio carefully matching the allocation and investment horizons being active or passive according to investment policies being agnostic about model forecasts and being aware that while buy low and sell high is a truism investors and financial advisers are only human and therefore make mistakes

private information and altruism in bidding roscas this article studies how altruism improves allocations in a private information environment where strategic behaviour reduces economic welfare a theoretical analysis establishes that in an environment characterised by uncertainty and private information outcomes of auctions in rotating savings and credit associations roscas are more efficient when bidders preferences are altruistic rather than selfish a semi parametric structural estimation technique for rosca auctions is presented a parametric structural estimation identifies interactions between group characteristics and bidder altruism it is found that effective leadership and intra group diversity are associated with a greater extent of bidder altruism and thus more efficient intra rosca allocations

learning to bid in sequential dutch auctions abstract we propose an agent based computational model to investigate sequential dutch auctions with particular emphasis on markets for perishable goods and we take as an example wholesale fish markets buyers in these markets sell the fish they purchase on a retail market the paper provides an original model of boundedly rational behavior for wholesale buyers behavior incorporating learning to improve profits conjectures as to the bids that will be made and fictitious learning we analyze the dynamics of the aggregate price under different market conditions in order to explain the emergence of market price patterns such as the well known declining price paradox and the empirically observed fact that the very last transactions in the day may be at a higher price the proposed behavioral model provides alternative explanations for market price dynamics to those which depend on standard hypotheses such as diminishing marginal profits furthermore agents learn the option value of having the possibility of bidding in later rounds when confronted with random buyers such as occasional participants or new entrants they learn to bid in the optimal way without being conscious of the strategies of the other buyers when faced with other buyers who are also learning their behavior still displays some of the characteristics learned in the simpler case even though the problem is not analytically tractable

guarantees in auctions the auction house as negotiator and managerial decision maker the multimillion dollar price guarantees that an auction house can offer for paintings have already had a large impact on auction house profits and place new demands on the auctioneer s decision making and negotiating skills yet auctioneers have not been studied as independent entities and decision makers to create a price guarantee the auction house and the seller must negotiate both the guarantee amount and the extra commission the seller pays if the auction price exceeds the guarantee we present a normative model of negotiations and find the frontier of guarantee and commission that is the nash bargaining solution we also determine the optimal reserve that the auctioneer should place on guaranteed property we find that guarantees decrease the auction house s expected revenue compared to a conventional auction but do allow it to attract business which might otherwise be lost guarantees benefit sellers increasing the expected value and lowering the variance of their auction revenue the auctioneer s optimal strategy depends not only on the distribution of the artwork s auction price but also the price it will bring if it fails to sell at auction in the latter case the auction house must pay the seller the guarantee and then sell the artwork which it now owns in a private secondary market where buyers regard the property as damaged goods and lower their offers although all points on the frontier produce equal expected revenue several frequently used decision making rules suggest that both parties may prefer a guarantee arrangement where the seller pays no additional commission and the guarantee has the lowest value on the frontier

anchoring effects evidence from art auctions in order to separate anchoring where an irrelevant message has an effect on the outcome from rational learning where past prices are not irrelevant because they may be used to estimate unobservable quality we use the following strategy we first develop a hedonic prediction of price for both the current sale e g the 2006 sale and the previous sale these hedonic predic tions are based on observable characteristics of each painting and an index of overall prices we then regress actual sale price on our hedonic prediction on the difference between the actual price in the previous sale and our hedonic prediction this expression tests for anchoring and on the difference between the actual price in the previous sale and our hedonic prediction of price in the previous sale this expression controls for unobservable characteristics the test for anchor ing is the extent to which the actual price in the previous sale affects the current sale price we can identify anchoring from other effects because the demand for art which is captured by the average overall price index changes over time whereas the unobservable component of qual ity is assumed to remain constant between auctions this allows us to control for unobserved quality characteristics as long as something drastic has not happened between sales such as a painting has been deemed a fake which is a very rare occurrence the assumption of constant quality is a realistic one

bidding in private value auctions with uncertain values abstract auctions are often used to sell idiosyncratic goods difficult for potential bidders to value ex ante laboratory auctions with uncertainty over final values in this experiment resulted in 18 and 27 of bids above the expected value of the item in private value first price and english auctions respectively risk seeking preferences as measured on an individual decision task cannot explain overbidding and the first price auction results suggest that risk aversion may not be a good explanation for bidding behavior observed with certain values several candidate explanations fail to explain overbidding rather it appears to stem from some bidders who are prone to overbidding relative to first price auctions the size and frequency of overbids are significantly larger in english auctions while more english auctions are won by overbidders differences between the formats appear to be driven by the dynamic nature of english auctions which is consistent with popular notions of auction fever

optimal auctions with asymmetric financial externalities abstract this paper studies optimal auction design with asymmetric linear financial externalities among bidders when the matrix that relates bidders payoffs to their payments is nonsingular the payment related component in the design objective must equal a unique linear combination of its counterparts in bidder s payoffs if all multipliers of the linear combination are nonnegative a modified myerson procedure is discovered for deriving the optimal design if any multiplier is negative an arbitrarily high value can be achieved for design objective by setting proper fixed transfers to bidders when the matrix is singular the unbounded optimum result typically prevails we applied our method to auctions with cross shareholdings and charity auctions for revenue maximizing and efficient designs

silent auctions in the field and in the laboratory we analyze data from hundreds of auctions from three field silent auction sessions we focus on the descriptive statistics and on a parametric model of jump bidding we then report data from six laboratory sessions of silent auctions as a controlled environment this allows us to evaluate the auctions in ways not available within the field the laboratory experiments capture essential features of the field sessions and thus comprise a credible laboratory testbed for further examination of institutional perturbations in the silent auction jel d44 h41

the terms of trade the real exchange rate and economic fluctuations this paper examines the relationship between terms of trade and business cycles using a three sector intertemporal equilibrium model and a large multicountry database results show that terms of trade shocks account for nearly one half of actual gdp variability the model explains weak correlations between net exports and terms of trade the harberger laursen and metzler effect and produces large and weakly correlated deviations from purchasing power parity and real interest rate parity terms of trade shocks cause real appreciations and positive interest differentials although productivity shocks have opposite effects the puzzle that welfare gains of international asset trading are negligible is left unresolved copyright 1995 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

bidding behavior and experience in internet auctions abstract we study the role of experience in internet art auctions by analyzing repeated bidding by the same bidder in a unique longitudinal field dataset our results show that experience significantly lowers the level of bids suggesting that bidders change their bidding behavior throughout time participating in more than ten auctions brings down average bids by up to 26 we further test several possible explanations for the observed learning behavior and show that the change in bidding strategy is a result of a change in within auction behavior that is generated with experience our results are robust to concerns of endogenous participation as well as bidder fixed effects

ordering revenue and anchoring in art auctions we estimate the effect of ordering by value on revenues in sequential art auctions held by sotheby s and christie s we exploit a pre determined rotation of which of these two houses holds their auction first during auction week in new york city when the house that goes first has relatively expensive paintings compared to the other house we find that the sale premium for the week is around 21 higher relative to the mean sale premium and the fraction of paintings sold during the week is around 11 higher we provide evidence that this is due to an anchoring effect

charitable motives and bidding in charity auctions research on bidding in auctions has generally relied on the assumption of self interested bidders this work relaxes that assumption in the context of charity auctions because understanding charitable motives has important implications for auction design and charities fundraising strategies this study investigates bidders specific types of charitable motives and the strength of these motives we carry out three controlled field experiments consisting of real life auctions conducted on a local internet auction site we use a novel design in which we simultaneously run charity and noncharity auctions for identical products and vary the percentage donated to charity results show that auctions with proceeds donated to charity lead to significantly higher selling prices a result due to a higher bidding by bidders with charitable motives rather than to increased bidder entry we also find that increased prices only occur when the charitable donation is a percentage of the auction revenue and that a fixed charitable donation associated with each auction has no effect on prices furthermore we find that prices are increasing in the percentage donated to charity we find considerable support for a model of voluntary shill like bidding where charitable bidders try to increase proceeds in charity auctions we also find that auctions with 25 of revenue donated to charity had higher net revenue than noncharity auctions hence companies may be able to use charity auctions as part of a corporate social responsibility strategy and at the same time increase profitability even though they donate part of the proceeds to charity

the impact of reserve prices on the perceived bias of expert appraisals of fine art we examine whether the expert appraisals provided to bidders before major art auctions are unbiased indicators of market value despite a strong grounding in theory this aspect of optimal auction design has been frequently challenged in previous empirical research particularly in the market for fine art we adopt a valuation benchmark that incorporates sellers reservation prices as well as high bids and recognize latent censoring due to works that fail to make reserve although the auction houses never divulge sellers reserve prices which are therefore unobservable we exploit the fact that they can be observed indirectly via their impact on buy in rates using the set of french impressionist paintings brought to auction from 1985 to 2001 we estimate the distribution of seller reserve prices establish their link to a proper valuation benchmark and isolate the selection bias due to bought in works on the perceived market value of fine art works brought to auction after controlling for the impact of reservation prices and considering all works brought to auction and therefore all works appraised we find no evidence of bias in the experts pre sale estimates

consumption and risk sharing over the life cycle a striking feature of u s data on income and consumption is that inequality increases with age this paper asks if individual specific earnings risk can provide a coherent explanation we find that it can we construct an overlapping generations general equilibrium model in which households face uninsurable earnings shocks over the course of their lifetimes earnings inequality is exogenous and is calibrated to match data from the u s panel study on income dynamics consumption inequality is endogenous and matches well data from the u s consumer expenditure survey the total risk households face is decomposed into that realized before entering the labor market and that realized throughout the working years in welfare terms the latter is found to be more important than the former

rotating savings and credit associations when participants are risk averse we model rotating savings and credit associations roscas among risk averse participants who experience privately observed income shocks a random rosca is not advantageous whereas a bidding rosca is if temporal risk aversion is less pronounced than static risk aversion the payoff scheme of a bidding rosca facilitates risk sharing in the presence of information asymmetries the risk sharing performance of a simple arrangement where a group of homogenous individuals runs several bidding roscas simultaneously is as good as that of a linear risk sharing contract and is more enforceable because it carries a fixed rather than a variable contribution

how not to run auctions the european 3g telecom auctions abstract there were enormous differences in the revenues from the european third generation 3g or umts mobile phone license auctions from 20 euros per capita in switzerland to 650 euros per capita in the uk though the values of the licenses sold were similar poor auction designs in some countries facilitated collusion between firms and failed to attract entrants the sequencing of the auctions was also crucial we discuss the auctions in the uk netherlands germany italy austria switzerland belgium greece and denmark

charity auctions with multiple goods bidding behavior and revenue abstract in a charity auction with multiple goods we show that the highest losing bid uniform price auction revenue dominates its lowest winning bid counterpart only in the highest losing bid uniform price auction is bidding independent of the number of goods and players and revenue increasing in the number of goods

the declining price anomaly in dutch dutch rose auctions in symmetric independent private value auctions of a single object with risk neutral bidders the english second price auction has strategic simplicity it is optimal for bidders to reveal their valuation of the object and make bids accordingly in that case the auction is won by the person with the highest valuation who pays a price equal to the second highest valuation in a dutch first price auction this simplicity vanishes here winning bidders have to pay their bid to make a profit they shade their bids and bid below their valuation of the object somewhat loosely one may state that an english auction is truth revealing whereas a dutch auction requires strategic behavior the simple structure of the one unit english auction vanishes if two identical objects are auctioned sequentially now in the first round it is optimal for bidders to shade their bids to account for the option value of participating in the subsequent second round robert j weber 1983 bidders with a higher valuation also have a higher option value therefore they shade their bids in the first round by a greater amount than do bidders with a lower valuation as the auction proceeds the number of bidders decreases over the sequence of auctions the number of objects decreases as well the first fact has a negative effect on the competition for an object and the second has a positive effect both effects cancel out and prices follow a martingale as a result all gains to waiting are arbitraged away and the expected prices in both rounds are the same the latter result also holds for sequential auctions of more than two objects and does not depend on whether the auction is english or dutch this neat theoretical result is not supported by empirical research which usually finds price declines orley ashenfelter 1989 found a mild price decrease in sequential auctions of identical units of wine mcafee and daniel vincent 1993 also present empirical evidence on sequential wine auctions they found that on average the second unit of wine was sold at a price 1 4 percent lower than the price of the first unit victor ginsburgh 1998 uses data from wine auctions in which the auctioneer acted as an agent for bidders who were not present at the auction he found price declines but apparently the absent bidders entered bids that did not fit with the theory empirical studies by ashenfelter and david genesove 1992 see also jean jacques laffont 1997 and alan beggs and kathryn graddy 1997 concern heterogeneous objects they also detected price declines because of the contradiction between theory and empirical studies the declining price phenomenon is regarded to be an anomaly

collusive practices in repeated english auctions experimental evidence on bidding rings the repeated meeting of buyers at english auctions where multiple units are sold is a common occurrence the art auctions at sotheby s christie s and other prestigious auction houses are attended by a regular group of institutional buyers more mundanely the same taxicab buyers meet at vehicle auctions for used police cars jon p nelson 1995 commission order buyers attend the same livestock and agricultural commodity auctions these buyers may be agents for multiple meat processors u s department of agriculture grain inspection packers and stockyards administration 2001 the 1946 american tobacco antitrust case american tobacco co et al v united states 328 u s 781 1946 is a well known account of how buyers of tobacco operated to hold down the price of auctioned leaf tobacco at various sites buyers for the big three cigarette manufacturers had developed facilitating practices that helped them purchase raw tobacco at relatively low prices these buyers voluntarily restricted themselves to attend the same auctions buyers were aware of the amount of leaf and the tobacco grades available at auction sites they had instructions from the cigarette makers on the highest bid prices they could pay and communication among these buyers seemed evident from a coordinated practice of buying low grade tobacco that was not used by the makers in the sale of livestock cattle producers have claimed that packer buyers act to hold down cattle prices at the auction site there are a few large processors who give their agents buy orders these orders along with further communication between the processor and agent instruct the agent on the number of cattle to purchase during a given week and provide a schedule of prices they can pay for varying types of cattle some agents represent more than one processor or packer and therefore have multiple buy orders agents repeatedly meet each other at regional cattle auctions they may not be the only buyers but they are the largest purchasers of slaughter cattle brought to market and at most auction sites have substantial monopsony power this paper documents the impacts of several practices that may facilitate low sale prices when multiple units are sold at repeated english auctions laboratory english auction markets are created the number of symmetric buyers attending the auction is either six or two with total demand in these two environments held constant the six buyer market is intended to represent a relatively competitive environment while auctions with two buyers represent rivalry with substantial monopsony power held by each agent we use these two market environments to study how selected treatments or facilitating influences affect the behavior of buying agents the six buyer market generally is viewed as a control for comparison to the dominant twobuyer environment but very collusive behavior may be observed in the six buyer auctions depending upon market practices phillips department of economics and finance university of wyoming p o box 3985 laramie wy 82071 e mail owenphil uwyo edu menkhaus department of agricultural and applied economics university of wyoming p o box 3354 laramie wy 82071 e mail menkhaus uwyo edu coatney u s department of agriculture grain inspection packers and stockyards administration competition branch aurora co 80011 e mail kalyn t coatney usda gov this work has been supported by the u s department of agriculture under grant numbers usdagipsnc5418 and usdag00354009126 the findings and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agency 1 these are regional auctions houses where slaughter cattle primarily cull cows and fed steers and heifers and feeder cattle are sold cull cows are animals taken out of a herd and slaughtered because of age inability to produce calves or reduced milk production concerns regarding slaughter cow possessors sharing common purchasing agents have been raised in assessment of the cattle and hog industries calendar year 2000 u s department of agriculture grain inspection packers and stockyards administration june 2001

the collateral value of fine art in this paper we examine the effect of implicit seller reserves on the estimation of value at risk based on historical asset sales data we direct our examination toward how and whether fine art might prove an appropriate form of loan collateral for banks and other financial institutions using a data set of french impressionist paintings brought to auction from 1985 to 2001 we control for the effect of works that are bought in house to construct a distribution of potential sale values that corrects for sample selection bias it turns out that the downside risk surrounding deviations of auction prices from expert presale estimates depends critically on how buy ins are incorporated if downside risk is assessed solely on historical experience with successful auction sales the data appear to support loan to value ratios between 50 and a 100 larger than loan to value ratios that countenance the existence of seller reserves the auction process however is quantifiable and can reveal the necessary risk information required for loan consideration

erratumauction guarantees for works of art this paper addresses the question of whether auction guarantees change the bidding environment and whether they cause a change in price once the value of an item is taken into account we analyze both the cases of third party guarantees and in house guarantees we use two datasets one of christie s and sotheby s contemporary and impressionist evening sales from january 2010 to february 2012 and another larger dataset consisting of all items auctioned at christie s from 2001 to may 2011 while more expensive items are more likely to have guarantees we find little empirical evidence to suggest an effect on price from the guarantee itself once the value of the item is taken into account