Empirical Studies of Auctions and Bidding

9308713 Porter本项目将扩展研究者之前对拍卖与竞价的实证研究，由三部分组成。第一部分包括对海上野油区钻井活动的发生率和时间的分析。这些油田中有三分之一从未钻探过，而且在钻探之前存在严重的延迟。在五年租期届满时，期限效应是明显的。初步工作表明，钻井模式效率低下，因为协调钻井计划可能会有所收获。这项工作将进一步表征钻井决策，以确定公司如何应对租赁出售后获得的信息，并量化效率低下的程度。第二部分包括对野猫地联合投标的研究。提交的投标中有一半以上是联合投标，1975年国会禁止8家大公司中有两家或两家以上参与联合投标。本研究的目的是确定联合投标所起的作用。它们可能通过汇集资金或分散风险来促进竞争，但它们可能会产生反竞争的效果，因为它们允许公司同意不那么激进地投标。该项目将尝试区分这些不同的解释，以便为决策提供信息。第三部分将从司法部和反垄断审判记录中收集采购拍卖数据。之前的工作分析了纽约州在20世纪80年代早期的公路铺设合同中的投标模式，在拍卖中，一部分公司涉嫌参与了投标操纵计划。这项工作将检查其他数据集，以确定其他拍卖市场中串通投标的发生率和特征。所采用的经验技术将不同于以前使用的技术，因为操纵投标方案取决于拍卖规则和被出售货物的性质，而且还因为可以获得关于履行合同成本的更详细数据。新的数据集可能包括学校牛奶合同的竞标。＊＊＊

9308713 Porter This project will extend the investigator's prior empirical research on auctions and bidding and consists of three parts. The first consists of an analysis of the incidence and timing of drilling activity on offshore wildcat oil tracts. A third of these tracts are never drilled, and there is significant delay prior to drilling. A deadline effect is apparent at the expiration of the five year lease term. Initial work indicates that drilling patterns are inefficient, in that there may be gains from coordination of drilling plans. This work will further characterize the drilling decision, in order to determine how firms respond to information that becomes available after the lease sale, and in order to quantify the degree of inefficiency. The second component consists of a study of joint bidding on wildcat tracts. More than half of the bids submitted are joint, and in 1975 Congress banned joint bids involving two or more of eight large corporations. The goal of this research is to determine the role played by joint bids. They may foster competition, by pooling capital or by spreading risk, but they may have anti-competitive effects by allowing firms to agree to bid less aggressively. The project will attempt to discriminate between these alternative explanations, in order to inform policy decisions. The third component will gather data on procurement auctions from the Justice Department and antitrust trial records. Previous work analyzed bid patterns in highway paving contracts let by New York State in the early 1980s, in auctions where a subset of firms allegedly engaged in a bid rigging scheme. This work will examine other data sets, in order to determine the incidence and characteristics of bid rigging in other auction markets. The empirical techniques employed will differ from those used previously, as bid rigging schemes depend on the auction rules and the nature of the goods being sold, and because more detailed data on the co sts of meeting the contract are available. The new data sets will probably include bidding on school milk contracts. ***