CAREER: Empirical Analysis of Auction and Matching Markets

摘要：这个职业项目包括围绕拍卖和匹配市场的实证分析的研究和教育项目。互联网及其周围的计算和通信技术的发展导致拍卖或其他机制的使用激增，以确定价格并为许多不同商品和服务的市场上的买家和卖家牵线搭桥。尽管关于这种市场机制如何运作的经济学理论已经取得了相当大的进展，但到目前为止，实证工作一直受到数据可用性和用于描述真实世界环境的经济模型的现实性的限制。该项目的研究部分将对三个不同但重要的市场环境进行深入的实证研究，在这些市场环境中，可以获得数据，理论和经验之间的差距是可以克服的。议程上的第一个研究项目将集中在ERCOT(德克萨斯州电力可靠性委员会)电力平衡市场。这是一个发电商提交每小时供应报价以增加或减少产量以满足电力需求短期波动的市场。这项研究利用发电公司竞价行为的非常详细的数据，以及对它们生产电力的边际成本的工程估计，将测试这些公司战略行为的经济学理论，重点是评估公司利用市场力量的程度，以及这如何影响为德克萨斯州2000万电力用户服务的市场所实现的生产效率。第二个研究项目研究加拿大银行为出售加拿大政府票据和债券而进行的拍卖。再次利用非常详细的投标人级别的数据集，这项研究将集中分析将参与这些拍卖限制在一组经认证的政府证券交易商身上的影响。这项研究特别会调查获准直接在拍卖中竞投的证券商与只能透过证券商竞投的非交易商投资者之间的复杂互动。该研究还旨在量化拟议的证券交易商之间的合并对加拿大政府公共债务融资成本的影响。第三个研究项目将注意力转移到了一个更具争议性但同样有趣的市场环境--互联网相亲。该项目的目的是开发经验方法，根据用户在在线约会网站上的搜索和匹配行为的数据，推断不同群体的个人对潜在匹配对象的偏好。根据我们对这些偏好模式的估计，然后我们将比较本网站上使用的特定匹配协议的效率与使用理论上激励的匹配协议获得的匹配的效率，量化改进市场设计的潜在收益。该职业项目的教育部分旨在教会下一代“市场设计师”如何利用迅速发展的理论和经验工具工具箱来分析和制定许多其他重要市场的政策。为了实现这一目标，该研究所将开发和教授一门新的应用市场设计研究生课程。为了在这个快速发展的领域进一步推进本科教育，PI将与芝加哥大学计算机科学系进行跨学科合作，以开发在线拍卖环境。在线环境下的课堂实验和演示将被整合到PI教授的本科生微观经济学和产业组织课程中，让学生获得真实世界拍卖和定价机制的实用知识

Abstract:This CAREER project consists of research and educational projects centered around the empirical analysis of auction and matching markets. The development of the Internet and surrounding computing and communication technologies have led to an explosion in the use of auctions or other mechanisms to set prices and match buyers and sellers in markets for many diverse goods and services. Although there have been considerable advances in economic theories of how such market mechanisms work, empirical work so far has been limited by the availability of data and the realism of economic models utilized to depict real-world environments. The research component of the project will conduct in-depth empirical studies of three distinct but important market settings where data is available and the gap between theory and empirics is surmountable. The first research project in the agenda will focus on the ERCOT (Electricity Reliability Council of Texas) electricity balancing market. This is a market where electricity generators submit hourly supply bids to increase or decrease production to meet short-term fluctuations in electricity demand. Utilizing very detailed data on the bidding behavior of generation firms, along with engineering estimates of their marginal costs of producing electricity, the study will test economic theories of strategic behavior by the firms, with a focus on assessing the extent to which firms utilize market power, and how this impacts the productive efficiency achieved by a market that serves 20 million electricity users in Texas. The second research project studies auctions conducted by the Bank of Canada to sell Government of Canada bills and bonds. Again utilizing a very detailed bidder-level data set, the study will focus on analyzing the impact of restricting participation to these auctions to a set of certified government securities dealers. In particular, the study will investigate the complex interactions between securities dealers who are allowed to bid in the auction directly, and non-dealer investors who can only place bids through securities dealers. The study also aims to quantify the impact of proposed mergers between securities dealers on the public debt financing costs of the Government of Canada. The third research project shifts attention to a somewhat more controversial, but equally interesting market setting, that of Internet matchmaking. The aim of the project is to develop empirical methods to infer a diverse group of individuals' preferences over their potential match partners, based on data on the search and matching behavior of users on an online dating site. Based on our estimates of these preference patterns, we will then compare the efficiency of the particular matching protocol utilized on this site to the efficiency of matches obtained using theoretically motivated matching protocols, quantifying potential gains to improved market design. The educational component of the CAREER project aims to teach future generations of "market designers" how to utilize the rapidly developing toolbox of theoretical and empirical tools to analyze and formulate policy in many other important markets. Towards this aim, the PI will develop and teach a new graduate course on applied market design. To further undergraduate education in this rapidly advancing field, the PI will undertake an interdisciplinary collaboration with the University of Chicago computer science department to develop an online auction environment. Classroom experiments and demonstrations on this online environment will be integrated into the curriculum of undergraduate microeconomics and industrial organization courses taught by the PI to allow students to gain a working knowledge of real-world auction and pricing mechanisms