the optimal auction a mechanism for optimal third degree price discrimination abstract recently bulow and roberts have indicated that there is a close correspondence between the optimal auction mechanism introduced by myerson and the problem of a monopolist practising third degree price discrimination in several markets they find differences however in the choice variables and in the constraints of the two problems a reinterpretation of the price discrimination problem leads to the demonstration that an optimal auction is an optimal way to practise price discimination

two models of bid taker cheating in vickrey auctions vickrey second price sealed bid auctions have attractive theoretical properties but standard first price sealed bidding is far more common explanations of the rarity of vickrey auctions rely on concern about revelation of private information and on fear of cheating the authors present two models of bid taker cheating a static game theoretic model and a reputation based model of repeated auctions in the first an honest bid taker will not choose a vickrey auction in the second a trusted bid taker who cheats when it pays eventually destroys his or her reputation and the trust on which the use of vickrey auctions depends copyright 1995 by university of chicago press

multiple round timber auction design and simulation this paper presents a multiple round timber auction simulation developed in order to study various configurations of auction design in this study simultaneous sequential timber auctions are modelled and analysed using agent based simulation technology as there are many individual items in the auction to be sold the auction designer defines several rounds that are sequential at pre defined intervals at each round the auction designer announces several simultaneous auctions since bidders are offered different items at each round a mathematical linear programing model for selecting the best set of items to bid for is presented different bidding patterns are simulated and compared in various setup configurations the most advanced of these strategies are adaptive and use agent learning capability the comparisons include the success rate of winning the auction and the winning price per m3 this study suggests an efficient bidding pattern for bidders to bid in order to achieve to their goal and increase their profit similarly in order to increase profit the auctioneer i e the government needs to control several auction parameters including the number of auctions per year the lot size the auction periodicity and the number of bidders this study also suggests parameters configurations that to maximise revenue for the auctioneer

uniform vs discriminatory auctions with variable supply experimental evidence in the variable supply auction considered here the seller decides how many customers with unit demand to serve after observing their bids bidders are uncertain about the seller s cost we experimentally investigate whether a uniform or a discriminatory price auction is better for the seller in this setting exactly as predicted by theory it turns out that the uniform price auction produces substantially higher bids and consequently yields higher revenues and profits for the seller furthermore again as predicted by theory the uniform price auction yields a higher number of transactions which makes it also the more efficient auction format

energy efficiency vs economic efficiency new zealand electricity sector reform in the context of the national energy policy objective abstract in this article i review the diverse commentaries on new zealand s ongoing electricity sector reform process within the context of the government s energy policy objective in doing so my purpose is to highlight the interactions between the concepts of energy efficiency and economic efficiency in particular i ask how do the various commentators on reform define these concepts what indicators do they use to measure them and what level of each do they prescribe as appropriate my main objective is not to decide whether any commentator is right or wrong rather i seek to identify the distinct world views or paradigms underlying the commentaries with respect to both energy efficiency and economic efficiency i conclude that economic efficiency is consistent with a supply side paradigm valuing economic growth whereas those who value energy efficiency over economic efficiency subscribe to a demand side paradigm recognising the limits to growth such a paradigm derives from the ethic of sustainability i close by posing the as yet unanswered question are these paradigms mutually exclusive

managing online auctions current business and research issues the internet s computational power and flexibility have made auctions a widespread and integral part of both consumer and business markets though online auctions are a multi billion dollar annual activity with a growing variety of sophisticated trading mechanisms scientific research on them is at an early stage this paper analyzes the current state of management science research on online auctions it develops a broad research agenda for issues such as the behavior of online auction participants the optimal design of online auctions the integration of auctions into the ongoing operation of firms and the use of the data generated by online auctions to inform future trading mechanisms these research areas will draw from applied and theoretical work spanning management science economics and information systems

a test that discriminates between two models of the dutch first auction non isomorphism abstract previous experiments reject the hypothesis that the dutch and first auctions are isomorphic two alternatives to the standard normal form analysis of the dutch auction are formalized 1 bidders violate bayes rule 2 bidders experience a utility of suspense that is additive with the utility of monetary reward paired comparisons of bidding behavior between groups in which the treatment is to triple the payoff of the baseline group yields no significant effect of this treatment we therefore reject the utility of suspense model

collusive bidder behavior at single object second price and english auctions models of collusive bidder behavior at single object second price and english auctions are provided the ind ependent private values model is generalized to permit the formulatio n of coalitions and a strategic response by the auctioneer cooperati ve strategies are found to be dominant in these models coalitions of any size are viable and the payoff to each member increases with th e size of the coalition in addition the collusive strategies of the coalition represent a noncooperative equilibrium the optimal respon se of the auctioneer is to establish a reserve price that is a functi on of the coalition s size these and other features of the model are found to be consistent with the essential features of actual behavio r copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

optimal auctioning and ordering in an infinite horizon inventory pricing system we consider a joint inventory pricing problem in which buyers act strategically and bid for units of a firm s product over an infinite horizon the number of bidders in each period as well as the individual bidders valuations are random but stationary over time there is a holding cost for inventory and a unit cost for ordering more stock from an outside supplier backordering is not allowed the firm must decide how to conduct its auctions and how to replenish its stock over time to maximize its profits we show that the optimal auction and replenishment policy for this problem is quite simple consisting of running a standard first price or second price auction with a fixed reserve price in each period and following an order up to basestock policy for replenishing inventory at the end of each period moreover the optimal basestock level can be easily computed we then compare this optimal basestock reserve price auction policy to a traditional basestock list price policy we prove that in the limiting case of one buyer per period and in the limiting case of a large number of buyers per period and linear holding cost list pricing is optimal list pricing also becomes optimal as the holding cost tends to zero numerical comparisons confirm these theoretical results and show that auctions provide significant benefits when 1 the number of buyers is moderate 2 holding costs are high or 3 there is high variability in the number of buyers per period

economic insights from internet auctions this paper surveys recent studies of internet auctions four main areas of research are summarized first we survey several studies that document and attempt to explain the frequently observed sniping or last second bidding behavior in these auctions second we summarize several methods proposed to quantify the distortions caused by asymmetric information in these markets most notably due to the winner s curse third we explore research about the role of reputation mechanisms installed to help combat these distortions finally we discuss what internet auctions have to teach us about auction design

costly bidding in online markets for it services internet enabled markets are becoming viable venues for procurement of professional services we investigate bidding behavior within the most active area of these early knowledge markets the market for software development these markets are important both because they provide an early view of the effectiveness of online service markets and because they have a potentially large impact on how software development services are procured and provided using auction theory we develop a theoretical model that relates market characteristics to bidding and transaction behavior taking into account costly bidding we then test our model using data from an active online market for software development services which yields contracts for 30 40 of posted projects in its current format however the studied market may induce excessive bidding by vendors consistent with our theoretical predictions and those of carr 2003 higher value projects attract significantly more bids with lower average quality greater numbers of bids raise the cost to all participants due to costly bidding and bid evaluation perhaps as a consequence higher value projects are also much less likely to be awarded

dynamic pricing models for used products in remanufacturing with lost sales and uncertain quality in this paper we investigate the remanufacturing problem of pricing single class used products cores in the face of random price dependent returns and random demand specifically we propose a dynamic pricing policy for the cores and then model the problem as a continuous time markov decision process we first design a basic model that does not consider the quality uncertainty of cores and then extend our model to incorporate this factor besides proving optimal policy uniqueness and establishing monotonicity results for the optimal policy we also characterize the impact of system parameters on the optimal policies which can provide simple managerial insights finally we use computational experiments to assess the benefits of dynamic pricing compared to static pricing and identify the impacts of specific parameters on the relative merits of dynamic pricing policy

geometric brownian motion and structural breaks in oil prices a quantitative analysis the purpose of this paper is to present a quantitative analyses of oil price s path we try to argue that despite its parsimony and simplicity geometric brownian motion can perform well as a proxy for the movement of oil prices and for a state variable to evaluate oil deposits we base our argument on evidences of very low speed of mean reverting or long half life since unit root tests only can reject its null hypothesis in a sample longer than 100 years on the other hand we reject the null hypothesis of unit root with two endogenous breaks showing that the usual rejection can be attributed to omitted structural breaks we conclude that the average half life of oil price between 4 and 8 years depending on the model chosen is long enough to allow a good approximation as a geometric brownian motion

optimal bidding in auctions from a game theory perspective abstract the game theoretic perspective in auction bidding has provided a powerful normative framework for the analysis of auctions and it has generated an impressive volume of research contributions tracing this research we review key recent advances which have greatly expanded our understanding of the operation of auctions and produced a more accurate analysis of mechanism design and optimal bidding we follow various experimental studies which have shown that the predictive power of auction theory remains in many cases limited for this reason we concentrate on research themes which enhance the applicability of auction theory leading to more realistic descriptions of bidding behaviors we identify important innovations which expand the environment of auction bidding and carry us beyond rational decision making we conclude providing directions of future research and discussing their implications

the effect of implementing trade in strategy on duopoly competition abstract we study a firm that makes new products in the first period and collects used products through trade in along with new product sale in the second period to conduct a convincing analysis we initially evaluate the problem in a duopoly situation in which one firm firm a implements trade in and the other one firm b does not we subsequently introduce the competitive environment in a two period planning horizon to identify thresholds that determine the trade in operations and then derive the equilibrium decisions of the resulting scenarios we characterize the optimal production quantities that are associated with parameter b the sum of used product salvage value and government subsidy in the nash equilibrium results indicate that adopting trade in could bring competitive advantage for firm a in terms of market share and profit if the new product sale is comparatively profitable then the trade in firm may forgo some of the collection margin by raising the trade in rebate and selling additional units to increase new product sale in the second period moreover the total collection quantity does not always increase with government subsidy we consequently expand the model to the case where both firms compete in trade in and derive the corresponding decision space of the duopoly firms finally we explore the effect of adopting trade in on consumer surplus and compare it in the two models

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

the vulnerability of auctions to bidder collusion previous work has addressed the relative vulnerability of different auction schemes to collusive bidding the common wisdom is that ascending bid and second price auctions are highly susceptible to collusion we show that the details of ascending bid and second price auctions including bidder registration procedures and procedures for information revelation during the auction can be designed to completely inhibit or unintentionally facilitate certain types of collusion if auctions are designed without acknowledging the possibility of collusion then the design will ignore key features that impact the potential success of colluding bidders

pricing used products for remanufacturing remanufacturing is one of recovery options for used products as remanufacturing requires a continuous supply of used products the economic incentive is required to attract customers to return their used products called cores and the problem of pricing a core becomes an important issue such a pricing problem is analogous to pricing an option which can be used to sell the remanufactured cores called core products as sales price of core products follows a geometric brownian motion we propose a model here to evaluate the acquisition price of cores this model links core acquisition price with the sale price of core product but assumes other costs such as logistics and remanufacturing to be deterministic we have presented a numerical example to show its applicability since the model proposed here is generic it is believed that the proposed model can be used in setting the core prices in many situations

an empirical study of an auction with asymmetric information this paper examines federal auctions for drain age leases on the outer continental shelf from 1959 to 1969 these are leases that are adjacent to tracts on which a deposit has been discovered the authors find that the data strongly support the hypotheses that neighbor firms are better informed about the value of a lease than nonneighbor firms that neighbor firms coordinate their bidding decisions and that both types of firms bid strategically in accordance with the bayesian nash equilibrium model for first price sealed bid auctions with asymmetric information

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

collusion in uniform price auctions experimental evidence and implications for treasury auctions in uniform price auctions of shares there exist collusive equilibria in which bidders capture the entire surplus from the auction as well as competitive equilibria in which the auctioneer captures the entire surplus from the auction we provide experimental evidence that in uniform price auctions non binding pre play communication facilitates convergence to collusive equilibrium outcomes on the other hand regardless of the opportunities for communication in discriminatory auction experiments subject strategies conform closely with the unique equilibrium in undominated strategies in which bidders gains are equal to the smallest tick size in the bidding schedule this evidence suggests that uniform price auctions of treasury securities may result in lower revenues than the currently employed discriminatory procedure

the bidder s curse traditional explanations for the popularity of auctions are efficiency and revenue maximization we argue that another reason is the potential for overbidding i e buyers bidding above their willingness to pay outside the auction the auction mechanism ensures that even if only few buyers overbid they affect prices and allocations we employ a novel approach to identify overbidding in the field comparing auction prices to simultaneous fixed prices for identical items on the same ebay webpage we argue that fixed prices provide an upper bound for auction bids in a detailed data set of board game auctions we find that the final price exceeds the simultaneous fixed price in 42 percent of the auctions the result is not explained by differences in item quality shipping costs or seller reputation prior auction experience does not eliminate overbidding the finding replicates in a second broad data set of a cross section of auctions 48 percent overbidding the substantial fraction of overbid auctions is induced by a small number of bidders only 17 percent ever bid above the fixed price using a simple model of second price auctions with alternative fixed prices we show that transaction costs of switching between auctions and fixed prices cannot explain the results given that even the expected auction price is higher than the fixed price consistent with limited attention the closer the fixed price is listed relative to an auction the less likely are overbids this effect is strongest for bidders first bids when they are likely to examine the auction and fixed price listings more closely

ex post the investment performance of collectible stamps this paper uses stamp catalogue prices to investigate the returns on british collectible postage stamps over the period 1900 2008 we find an annualized return on stamps of 7 0 in nominal terms or 2 9 in real terms these returns are higher than those on bonds but below those on equities the volatility of stamp prices approaches that of equities stamp returns are impacted by movements in the equity market but the systematic risk of stamps remains low stamps partially hedge against unanticipated inflation estimates of average after cost returns for individual investors show that stamps may rival equities in terms of realized performance

revisiting electricity liberalization and quality of service empirical evidence from new zealand abstractwhat effect does the firm structure have on the quality of service delivered by networks and infrastructure industries we answer this question by empirically assessing the impacts of complete vertical separation such as ownership unbundling on the quality of service delivered by a liberalized network industry electricity distribution utilities in new zealand are considered for this purpose and are analysed using panel data econometrics the results show robust evidence that ownership unbundling contributed to a fall in the duration and frequency of supply interruptions in electricity distribution however the results also show that unbundling has no effect on reducing distribution network losses these results overall highlight the nonsimple impacts of ownership unbundling on the quality of electricity distribution we suggest that the quality of service may largely improve when considered in the economic regulation of electricity networks than completely relying on specific reform measures

step level reasoning and bidding in auctions step level models of reasoning slr proved to be very successful in predicting behavior in the beauty contest game recently a quantified version of the model was suggested as a more general model of thinking in particular it was found that the distribution of choices could be represented by a poisson distribution i test the model in stylized first and second price common value sealed bid auctions equilibrium for both auction types prescribes that players undercut each other and profits are small the slr prediction on the other hand is different for the two auctions nash equilibrium predicts the outcomes poorly the slr model predicts the outcomes well in the second price auction however while bids in the first price auction could be represented by a poisson distribution this could not be attributed to step level reasoning

eliciting and utilizing willingness to pay evidence from field trials in northern ghana we utilize the becker degroot marschak 1964 mechanism to estimate the willingness to pay for clean drinking water technology in northern ghana the bdm mechanism has attractive properties for empirical research allowing us to directly estimate demand compute heterogeneous treatment effects and study the screening and causal effects of prices with minor modifications to a standard field experiment setting we demonstrate the implementation of bdm along these three dimensions compare it to the standard take it or leave it method for eliciting willingness to pay and discuss practical issues for implementing the mechanism in true field settings jel classifications c93 d12 d82 l11 l31

auctions with endogenous quantity this article studies auctions in which several sellers compete for the right to sell to a market characterized by a negatively sloped demand curve in this environment the quantity traded becomes endogenous this effect leads to three results concerning the outcomes of open versus first price sealed bid auctions first an open auction yields a higher expected price than does sealed bidding second and more important the open auction captures less of the potential gains from trade than does the sealed bid auction third for broad classes of demand curves the efficiency gains from switching to sealed bids from an open auction accrue to both sellers and the buyer so that all concerned parties would agree to the change a direct application of the theory is to procurement the heavy use of sealed bidding in procurement is seen as rational in light of these results auction models with endogenous quantity could be an alternative to price setting oligopoly models for the study of price formation in general for the latter impose strong information requirements on agents and yield only equilibrium price vectors not equilibrium processes for determining prices

the effectiveness of english auctions abstract we study the performance of the english auction under different assumptions about the seller s degree of bayesian sophistication we define the effectiveness of an auction as the ratio between the expected revenue it generates for the seller and the expected valuation of the object to the bidder with the highest valuation total surplus we identify tight lower bounds on the effectiveness of the english auction for general private values environments and for private values environments where bidders valuations are non negatively correlated for example when the seller faces 12 bidders who the seller believes have non negatively correlated valuations whose expectations are at least as high as 60 of the maximal possible valuation an english auction with no reserve price generates an expected price that is more than 80 of the value of the object to the bidder with the highest valuation

a laboratory comparison of uniform and discriminative price auctions for reducing non point source pollution auctions allow regulators to identify land management changes with substantial environmental benefit and low opportunity cost this paper reports an experiment in which seller subjects compete in sealed offer auctions to obtain part of a fixed budget allocated by the experimenter regulator to subsidize pollution abatement one treatment employs uniform price auction rules whereas another treatment employs discriminative price auction rules we find that most offers in the uniform price auction are within 2 of cost whereas most offers in the discriminative price auction are at least 8 greater than cost nevertheless the discriminativeprice auction has superior overall market performance

the effect of remanufacturing on procurement decisions for resellers in secondary markets the role of remanufacturing as a competitive tool for firms has been reflected in a number of studies to show that remanufacturing can reduce the unit cost of production by reusing components however the fact that remanufacturing can be used as a strategic tool for serving secondary markets as well has not been acknowledged in the literature in this paper we study the use of remanufacturing as a tool to serve secondary markets specifically we model the case of a reseller who procures used products based on an older generation of technology from an advanced market and then uses one of two options a she can either resell a small fraction of these used products in a developing market where the technology is acceptable or b she can invest in the remanufacturing of these products and then sell them in the developing market at a higher price the main result of the paper is that using remanufacturing to serve secondary markets reduces the number of units procured from the advanced market for the reseller in addition we show based on certain cost structures that the reseller is always better off if she uses remanufacturing to a certain extent

auction design for the allocation of emission permits in the presence of market power to the extent that emission permits have been allocated using market mechanisms this has been done using a sealed bid auction design typically with discriminatory prices however several authors have recommended the ascending auction format basically two competing ascending auction designs have been suggested the standard ascending auction with clock or demand schedules or an alternative ascending clock implementation of vickrey pricing the latter design was introduced as a response to problems of bid shading under the sealed bid and the standard ascending auction format the purpose of this paper is to investigate the allocation of permits under these two alternative mechanisms the auction process and the resulting market outcome in the presence of oligopolistic competition are simulated in this setting it is not obvious that bid shading is the optimal strategy under the standard design nor is it obvious that sincere bidding is the optimal strategy under the alternative ascending auction design the alternative auction format makes it less costly to pursue a strategy to increase market shares through the acquisition of emission permits thus increasing the competitor s costs leading to overbidding as the optimal strategy

pennies from ebay the determinants of price in online auctions this paper presents an exploratory analysis of the determinants of prices in online auctions for collectible united states one cent coins at the ebay web site starting with an initial data set of 20 000 auctions we perform regression analysis on a restricted sample of 461 coins for which we obtained estimates of book value we have three major findings first a seller s feedback ratings reported by other ebay users have a measurable effect on her auction prices negative feedback ratings have a much greater effect than positive feedback ratings do second minimum bids and reserve prices have positive effects on the final auction price in particular minimum bids appear only to have a significant effect when they are binding on a single bidder as predicted by theory third when a seller chooses to have her auction last for a longer period of days this significantly increases the auction price on average

multi criteria auctions without full comparability of bids the emergence of auction mechanisms that support bids characterized by several attributes is one of the most recent evolutions within auction theory these mechanisms referred to as multi attribute multiple issue or multi dimensional auctions are at the intersection between multi criteria decision and auction theories the purpose of this paper is to introduce multi criteria auctions the originality of which is not to require full comparability between bids we claim that this distinctive feature is of great interest especially in procurement situations furthermore the existence of potential incomparability between multi dimensional offers will permit us to manage different bidding niches coexisting within the same bidding space a theoretical framework based on a general preference structure will be introduced and then referenced to existing approaches such as multi attribute auctions or new ones such as dominance based multi criteria auctions or butterfly auctions

managing new and differentiated remanufactured products we study a firm that makes new products in the first period and uses returned cores to make remanufactured products along with new products in future periods the remanufactured product is differentiated from the new product so the firm needs to choose differentiated prices we analyze the monopoly environment in two period multi period three four and five and infinite planning horizons and characterize the optimal remanufacturing and pricing strategy for the firm in the process we identify remanufacturing savings thresholds that determine the production and pricing strategy for the firm among other results we find counter to intuition that in a finite horizon multi period setting the optimal policy is not necessarily monotone in remanufacturing savings

the outsourcing of r d through acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry abstract we examine the performance of 160 pharmaceutical acquisitions from 1994 to 2001 and find evidence that on average acquirers realize significant positive returns these returns are positively correlated with prior acquirer access to information about the research and development activities at target firms and a superior negotiating position a unique desperation index is employed to determine the current status of a firm s internal productivity we find that firms experiencing declines in internal productivity or which are more desperate are more likely to engage in an outsourcing type acquisition in an effort to replenish their research pipelines

measuring consumers willingness to pay at the point of purchase abstract economists psychologists and marketing researchers rely on measures of consumers willingness to pay wtp in estimating demand for private and public goods and in designing optimal price schedules existing market research techniques for measuring wtp differ in whether they provide an incentive to consumers to reveal their true wtp and in whether they simulate actual point of purchase contexts the authors present an empirical comparison of several procedures for eliciting wtp that are applicable directly at the point of purchase in particular the authors test the applicability of becker degroot and marschak s 1964 well known incentive compatible procedure for assessing the utility of lotteries to measuring consumers wtp in three studies the authors explore the reliability validity and feasibility of the procedure and show that it yields lower wtp estimates than do non incentive compatible methods such as open ended and double bounded contingent valuation they show experimentally t

estimating the stock of postwar dutch postal stamps this article seeks to find an answer to the question how many stamps are still around given that we know their prices at issue the current price and the amount then issued for this purpose i develop a simple statistical model the parameters of which are estimated for over 1000 postwar dutch stamps one finding is that some stamps are very scarce that is less than 100 copies must be around

the design of auctions and tenders with quality thresholds the symmetric case three designs of auctions with quality thresholds are considered the quality threshold is not known with certainty by the bidders in one scheme quality plans submitted by potential bidders are evaluated first and price bids for only those plans which have been approved are invited the second scheme has price bids first to yield a priority for scrutinising quality a third has simultaneous decisions on price and quality the model yields an equivalence result the use of reserve prices to produce social optimality is then investigated the theory is used to discuss the recent auction for uk television franchises

bidding behaviour in second price auctions rare stamp sales 1923 1937 we find significant asymmetries between bid functions of the low and high mail bidders in auctions of rare stamps over the extremes of the business cycle 1923 1937 we also find a strong negative relationship between the number of bidders and the bids suggesting that the common value characteristics of stamps outweigh their private value characteristics finally we show that stamp returns are positively related to inflation and to stock yields and negatively to interest rates these last results correspond to other studies of stamps over more stable sample periods

auctions and bidding a primer maybe the contractor was right to think bid jobs are different but it is more likely that he suffered from too simple a view of what is involved in preparing a competitive bid our analysis will show that even an experienced estimator working in familiar terrain can lose money if he doesn t understand the subtleties of competitive bidding the phenomenon experienced by the painting contractor known as the winner s curse is just one of the surprising and puzzling conclusions that have been turned up by modern research into auctions another is the theoretical proposition supported also by some experimental evidence that for example a sealed bid treasury bill auction in which each buyer pays a price equal to the highest rejected bid would yield more revenue to the treasury than the current procedure in which the winning bidder pays the seemingly higher amount equal to his own bid there are also subtle results that demonstrate the equivalence of such apparently different institutions as the standard sealed bid auction in which the auctioneer seller sells the goods to the highest bidder for a price equal to his bid and the dutch auction in which the auctioneer seller begins by asking a high price and gradually lowers the price until

a profit based unit commitment ga for the competitive environment as the electrical industry restructures many of the traditional algorithms for controlling generating units need modification or replacement previously utilized to schedule generation units in a manner that minimizes costs while meeting all demand the unit commitment uc algorithm must be updated a uc algorithm that maximizes profit will play an essential role in developing successful bidding strategies for the competitive generator simply bidding to win contracts is insufficient bidding strategies must result in contracts that on average cover the total generation costs no longer guaranteed to be the only electricity supplier a generation company s share of the demand will be more difficult to predict than in the past removing the obligation to serve softens the demand constraint in this paper the authors provide a price profit based uc formulation which considers the softer demand constraint and allocates fixed and transitional costs to the scheduled hours the authors describe a genetic algorithm solution to this new uc problem and present results for an illustrative example

multi object auctions with package bidding an experimental comparison of vickrey and ibea abstract the use of package auctions for complex resource allocation has been rapidly increasing in recent years in this paper we study two package auction mechanisms in a laboratory setting a sealed bid vickrey auction and an ascending version of vickrey the i bea auction unlike the single unit vickrey auction where bidders tend to overbid in the laboratory most of our bidders either underbid or bid their true values furthermore at the aggregate level while the vickrey auction generates significantly higher revenue than does i bea the i bea auction generates significantly higher bidder profit and efficiency additionally a significantly larger proportion of i bea auctions achieves 100 efficiency than does the vickrey auction we also find that human bidders learn from their robot opponents when the robot strategies are myopic best responses

electricity distribution as an unsustainable natural monopoly a potential outcome of new zealand s regulatory regime abstract the ongoing reform of new zealand s electricity supply industry has attempted to separate its potentially competitive elements from those with naturally monopolistic characteristics yet some competition for distribution services is occurring raising the question as to whether electricity distributors are natural monopolies as is typically assumed this paper presents a simple model of a representative new zealand distribution business and shows that in a true economic sense distributors are most probably sustainable natural monopolies as expected however the model demonstrates that a mechanism for competition may arise because the financial principles enshrined in the ministry of commerce s regulatory regime can produce unsustainable cost structures and unintentionally introduce elements of contestability into the market for distribution services

auctions and corruption an analysis of bid rigging by a corrupt auctioneer in many auctions the auctioneer is an agent of the seller this invites corruption we analyze a model in which the auctioneer orchestrates bid rigging by inviting a bidder to either lower or raise his bid whichever is more profitable the interplay between these two types of corruption gives rise to a complex bidding problem that we tackle with numerical methods our results indicate that corruption does not only redistribute surplus away from the seller but also distorts efficiency we furthermore explain why both the auctioneer and bidders have a vested interest in maintaining corruption

goethe s second price auction in 1797 johann wolfgang von goethe sold a manuscript through a second price auction we investigate goethe s motivation in the context of the late eighteenth century s book market and relate it to modern auction theory

credible sales mechanisms and intermediaries we consider a seller who faces several buyers and lacks access to an institution to credibly close a sale if buyers anticipate that the seller may negotiate further they will prefer to wait before making their best and final offers this in turn induces the seller to bargain at length with buyers even if doing so is costly when the seller s cost of soliciting another round of offers is either very large or very small the seller credibly commits to an auction and experiences negligible bargaining costs otherwise there may be several rounds of increasing offers and significant seller losses in these situations an intermediary with a sufficiently valuable reputation and or weak marginal incentives regarding price can create value by credibly committing to help sell the object without delay

vickrey auctions in practice from nineteenth century philately to twenty first century e commerce william vickrey 1961 proposed an auction mechanism in which bidders submit sealed bids and the highest bidder wins the good in return for payment of the second highest bid amount for decades economists have credited vickrey with inventing this auction format and have believed that the vickrey auction is rarely used in practice this paper presents evidence that vickrey auctions have long been the predominant auction format for mail sales of collectible postage stamps stamp auctioneers developed this auction format on their own as early as 1893 even before vickrey was born

information returns and bidding behavior in ocs auctions 1954 1969 this paper examines federal auctions for leases on the outer continental shelf in the light of the predictions of the first price sealed bid common values model of auctions the authors find that the data strongly support the model for auctions in which one bidder is better informed than the other bidders the evidence for auctions in which bidders have noisy but qualitatively similar information is less conclusive but is consistent with a model in which each bidder does not know either the actual or potential number of bidders on a lease copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

child auctions in nineteenth century sweden an analysis of price differences during the nineteenth century destitute and or orphan swedish children were boarded out as a part of that time s public assistance the families to which they were allocated were determined by means of english auctions this paper studies the price differences among such children using empirical data from 601 auctions price is regressed on variables related both to the buyer and to the child the results suggest that variables related to the children s characteristics were important and that the willingness to take a poor or orphan child was dependent on the foster parents uses for a child in the household children who were old enough to be used as shepherd boys or girls were easily placed it was worse with those who were feeble incapacitated blind sick mentally deranged or confined to their beds they were useless to farmers and others as a rule the most miserable were boarded out to the poorest of the non property owners julius ejdestam 1969 the poor s sweden my translation