ITR: Collaborative Research: (EVS + ASE) - Soc + int): Electronic Auction Markets

本计画以理论与实验相结合的方法，研究电子拍卖市场，特别注意一揽子拍卖与交换。在一揽子拍卖中，参与者对由多个项目组成的捆绑出价。在包交换中，参与者出价购买，出售或交换物品包。例如，联邦通信委员会的工作人员目前正在评估使用一个包交换，以重新分配新的和现有的用户之间的频谱权利。现有用户可以向其具有特征A的许可证提供$X，以换取具有特征B的另一个许可证。智力优势：如上所述的包拍卖是使用人类参与者、广泛的通信和复杂的优化来进行资源分配的分布式系统。潜在的收益包括改善高价值资源的分配，甚至改善救生应用。此外，新拍卖的设计是一项复杂的工程任务，必须考虑人类行为以及通信和计算需求。这项研究将解决成功实施一揽子拍卖和交易以及相关机制所涉及的所有问题。在众多目标中，研究人员计划（1）创建新的实验来测试理论的预测，例如最近Ausubel-Milgrom预测结果是核心分配，（2）从理论上确定几种环境中资源分配机制的通信和计算需求，（3）实验评估环境，投标人特征和投标人工具如何影响结果，（4）发展（距离）度量，允许研究人员将实际投标人行为与理论预测以及实现性能目标的机制所需的行为进行比较，（5）比较（理论和实验）不同市场机制的表现，包括静态和动态，（6）检查（包括理论和实验）包评估成本对投标人行为和拍卖绩效的影响。在许多高价值环境中，与传统设计相比，采用一揽子招标的拍卖和交换可以显著改善资源分配。静态打包拍卖已经用于商业采购;美国联邦通信委员会正在探索动态打包拍卖和交换，以将无线电频谱权重新分配给价值更高的用途。此外，不使用现金转移的类似拍卖的机制有望极大地改善重要交易，例如拯救生命的器官交换，帮助患者和捐赠者改善组织匹配并增加移植成功的机会，以及学校匹配程序，将儿童分配到学校并避免2003年纽约市高中经历的那种混乱。

This project studies electronic auction markets by integrating theoretical and experimental approaches, with particular attention to package auctions and exchanges. In package auctions, participants bid for bundles consisting of multiple items. In package exchanges, participants bid to buy, sell, or swap packages of items. For example, the Federal Communications Commission staff is currently evaluating the use of a package exchange to reallocate spectrum rights among new and existing users. An existing user might offer $X to its license with characteristics A for another license with characteristics B. Intellectual Merit: Package auctions as described above are distributed systems for resource allocation using human participants, extensive communications, and complex optimizations. The potential gains include improvements in high value resources allocations and even in life-savings applications. Moreover, the design of new auctions is a complex engineering task that must account for human behavior as well as communication and computation demands. This research will address all of the issues involved in successfully implementing package auctions and exchanges and related mechanisms. Among the many objectives, the investigators plan to (1) create new experiments to test the theory's predictions, such as the recent Ausubel-Milgrom prediction that outcomes are core allocations, (2) identify theoretically the communication and computation demands of resource allocation mechanisms in several kinds of environments, (3) evaluate experimentally how the environment, bidder characteristics and bidder tools affect the outcomes, (4) develop (distance) metrics that allow researchers to compare actual bidder behavior both to the predictions of theory and to the behaviors required for the mechanism to achieve performance targets, (5) compare (theoretically and experimentally) the performance of different market mechanisms, both static and dynamic, and (6) examine (both theoretically and experimentally) the effect of package evaluation costs on bidder behavior and auction performance.Broader Impacts: Auctions and exchanges with package bidding can result in dramatic improvements in resource allocations compared to traditional designs in many high-value settings. Static package auctions have already been used for business procurement; the US Federal Communications Commission is exploring dynamic package auctions and exchanges to reallocate radio spectrum rights to much higher valued uses. In addition, auction-like mechanisms that do not use cash transfers promise great improvements for important transactions, such as life-saving organ swaps that help patients and donors improve the tissue matches and increase the chance that transplants will succeed, and school matching procedures that assign children to schools and avoid the kind of chaos experienced, for example, by New York City high schools in 2003.