SBIR Phase I: Incorporating Bidder Budgets in Multi-Item Auctions

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将开发拍卖软件，允许投标人指定预算限制，并将评估该软件进行大规模多项目拍卖的可行性。在过去的15年里，多物品拍卖设计一直是经济学和计算机科学研究的前沿。然而，当投标人面临严重的预算限制时，没有任何现有机制能够实现有效竞争。新的密封投标设计使投标人能够指定预算，鼓励投标人提出更多更高的投标，更好地反映价值。因此，卖方将获得更高的价格，货物的分配将更具经济效率。在多件物品拍卖中，竞标者往往不能冒可能被要求支付高于授权预算的风险。这样的例子很普遍，从在线广告投放到矿产权和无线电频谱许可证的拍卖，而且已经部署了用于计算互联网广告预算的基本技术。目前迫切需要相关的基于预算的技术实体世界拍卖，因为缺乏这种技术正在减少投标的数量和水平。例如，在美国DOI的石油和天然气权销售中，平均投标数量仅为每个区块1.3个，由于需要限制预算暴露，失败的投标人无法竞争更多的区块。在对先前成功推出的多项目拍卖进行经济分析的基础上，本提案将采取下一步措施，创建多项目拍卖软件，使竞标者能够在有限的预算下有效地工作。这些拍卖将促进更有效的结果，并为卖家带来更高的收入。这项研究将初步评估软件用于油气租赁的可行性，这将是将高效拍卖引入公共和私营部门其他重要市场的关键里程碑。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop auction software that allows bidders to specify budget constraints, and will assess the feasibility of this software for conducting large-scale multi-item auctions. Multi-item auction design has been at the frontier of research in economics and computer science over the past fifteen years. Yet no existing mechanism enables effective competition when bidders face serious budget constraints. New, sealed-bid designs that enable bidders to specify a budget encourage bidders to place more and higher bids, better reflecting values. Sellers will therefore receive higher prices and assignments of goods will be more economically efficient. In multi-item auctions, bidders often cannot risk outcomes where they may be required to pay more than their authorized budgets. Examples are widespread, ranging from online ad placement to auctions of mineral rights and radio spectrum licenses, and rudimentary technologies to account for Internet ad budgets have already been deployed. There is an immediate need for related budget-based technology physical world auctions where the absence of such technology is reducing the number and level of bids. For example, in sales of oil and gas rights by the US DOI, the average number of bids has been only 1.3 per tract, with losing bidders unable to compete for more tracts due to their need to limit budget exposure. Building on economic analyses of multi-item auctions successfully produced under previous efforts, this proposal will take the next step, creating multi-item auction software that allows bidders to work effectively with limited budgets. These auctions will promote more efficient outcomes and higher revenues for sellers. This research will initially assess the feasibility of software for use in oil and gas leasing, which will be a crucial milestone in bringing efficient auctions to other important markets in both the public and private sectors.