Collaborative Research: Auctions and Resale Markets

近年来，拍卖作为一种有效的社会资产私有化方式被广泛使用。这些资产的一些突出例子是石油和天然气权、木材权和电磁频谱使用权。拍卖的实际应用反过来又导致了拍卖理论和实证分析的实质性发展。在大多数现实世界的拍卖中，竞标者预期转售的可能性，要么在他们自己之间，要么在更大的市场上。转售市场的存在既影响投标行为，也影响拍卖业绩。然而，除了少数例外，迄今为止关于拍卖的大部分理论和实证工作都忽略了转售市场的问题。这个项目探讨了两个主要问题。首先，考虑到转售的可能性存在，不同的拍卖形式在收入和经济效率方面表现如何？特别是，在存在转售的情况下，一种格式是否优于另一种格式？第二，转售的可能性如何影响拍卖中的出价行为，这些可能性如何影响给定拍卖形式的表现，无论是在效率方面还是在收入方面？例如，转售对卖家（比如政府）有利吗？还是应该鼓励甚至禁止转售？对第一个问题的初步研究表明，如果一个单一的对象被出售，转售是可能的，那么在收入方面，首价密封拍卖优于公开上行拍卖。这一理论发现在投标人不对称的情况下成立，在这种情况下，没有转售，没有两种格式的一般排名。因此，从方法论的角度来看，转售的考虑使得对非对称拍卖的分析——一个一般结果很少的领域——更容易处理。项目第一部分的主要目标是探索这一发现在其他环境中的扩展程度——更多的投标人、多个对象和不同的信息结构。该项目的第二部分实际上是问，转售限制——例如，由联邦通信委员会和其他机构实施的限制——从收入或效率的角度来看是否有益。同样是针对非对称首价拍卖的初步研究表明，转售实际上增加了收入。然而，它是否会增加社会剩余，似乎取决于不对称的程度。该项目的这一部分的主要目的是研究这些发现的普遍性和稳健性。

Auctions have been widely used in recent years as a way to effectively privatize social assets. Some prominent examples of such assets are oil and gas rights, timber rights and rights to use the electromagnetic spectrum. The practical use of auctions has, in turn, led to substantial developments in the theoretical and empirical analysis of auctions. In most real-world auctions bidders anticipate the resale possibilities, either among themselves or to a larger market. The presence of resale markets affects both bidding behavior and the performance of auctions. With a few exceptions, however, the bulk of the theoretical and empirical work on auctions to date has neglected the issue of resale markets. This project explores two major questions. First, given that resale possibilities exist, how do different auction formats perform in terms of revenue and economic efficiency? In particular, is one format preferable to another in the presence of resale? Second, how do resale possibilities affect bidding behavior in auctions and how do these possibilities affect the performance of a given auction format, both in terms of efficiency and in terms of the revenue? For instance, is resale advantageous to a seller, say a government, or should resale be discouraged or even banned?Preliminary research on the first question shows that if a single object is being sold and resale is possible, then first-price sealed-bid auctions are superior in terms of revenue to open ascending auctions. This theoretical finding holds in situations in which bidders are asymmetric, an environment in which, absent resale, no general ranking of the two formats is available. From a methodological perspective, therefore, resale considerations make the analysis of asymmetric auctions---an area where general results are few---more tractable. The main objective of the first part of the project is to explore the extent to which this finding extends to other environments---more bidders, multiple objects and different information structures.The second part of the project asks, in effect, whether resale restrictions---which, for instance, have been imposed by the FCC and other bodies---are beneficial from either a revenue or efficiency perspective. Preliminary research, again for asymmetric first-price auctions, suggests that resale actually increases revenues. Whether or not it increases social surplus, however, seems to depend on the degree of asymmetry. The main objective of this part of the project is to study the generality and robustness of these findings.