CAREER: Market Design and the Limits of Markets

这个职业项目将专注于市场的设计和限制。这项研究的广泛目标是了解特定的市场制度，如拍卖或匹配市场的设计，如何影响经济结果，以及设计市场所能实现的限制。它有三个组成部分。第一个重点是匹配市场，如劳动力市场或多单元拍卖。在最近一起针对国家居住权匹配计划的反垄断案件的推动下，这项研究研究了个性化价格的缺失可能会如何影响匹配的市场结果。第二个项目考虑拍卖规则，特别是在密封和公开竞标之间的选择如何影响市场参与、竞标行为和资源分配。该项目开发了新的理论假设，并将使用美国林业局木材销售数据对其进行检验。最后一个项目研究地方政府提供服务的情况。问题是，政府为什么以及何时在内部提供服务，而不是通过与私营部门公司的合同通过市场提供服务。这一决定是政治性的，但也涉及一个经典问题，即市场何时能够比中央组织更有效地提供服务。该项目将使用目前正在建设的关于地方政府服务提供的数据集来审查不同私有化理论的预测能力。每个组成部分都包括一个将研究整合到课堂教学中的教育计划。了解拍卖和匹配机制的表现在自然资源配置、劳动力市场和金融市场以及数十个其他环境中至关重要。前两个项目将揭示替代匹配市场机构的运作，以及两种普遍存在的拍卖设计--公开上升拍卖和密封竞价--的相对优点。第三条研究路线解决了一个基本的社会科学问题--公共部门和私营部门之间的界限--并将收集新的数据，在地方政府服务提供的背景下调查这一问题。所有三个研究项目都有直接的政策影响--对于自然资源分配和其他拍卖环境，对于提供地方政府服务，以及评估匹配市场的竞争力和中央市场清算机制的作用。

This CAREER project will focus on the design and limitations of markets. The broad aims of the research are to understand how specific market institutions, such as the design of auction or matching markets, affect economic outcomes, as well the limits to what designed markets can accomplish. There are three components. The first focuses on matching markets, such as labor markets or multi-unit auctions. Motivated by a recent antitrust case against the National Residency Matching Program, the research studies how the absence of individualized prices might affect matching market outcomes. The second project considers how auction rules, in particular the choice between sealed and open bidding, affects market participation, bidding behavior and resource allocation. The project develops new theoretical hypotheses and will test them using data from U.S. Forest Service timber sales. The final project studies service provision by local governments. The question is why and when governments provideservices internally rather than through the market via contracts with private sectorfirms. This decision is political, but also relates to the classic question of when markets can provide services more efficiently than a centralized organization. The project will examine the predictive power of different theories of privatization using a dataset on local government service provision that is currently being constructed. Each component includes an educational plan that integrates the research into classroom teaching.Understanding the performance of auction and matching mechanisms is of crucial importance in allocating natural resources, in labor markets and financial markets, and in dozens of other settings. The first two projects will shed light the functioning of alternative matching market institutions and on the relative merits of two ubiquitous auction designs, the open ascending auction and sealed bidding. The third line of research addresses a fundamental social science problem - where to draw the line between the public and private sectors - and will gather new data to investigate this problem in the context of local government service provision. All three research projects have direct policy implications - for natural resource allocation and other auction settings, for the provision of local government services, and for assessing the competitiveness of matching markets and the role of centralized market-clearing mechanisms.