Collaborative Research: Auctions and Resale Markets

近年来，拍卖被广泛用作有效地将社会资产私有化的一种方式。这类资产的一些突出例子是石油和天然气权、林业权和电磁频谱使用权。拍卖的实际使用反过来又导致了拍卖理论和经验分析的重大发展。在大多数现实世界的拍卖中，竞拍者都预料到了转售的可能性，要么是在自己之间，要么是在更大的市场上。转售市场的存在既影响竞价行为，也影响拍卖表现。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视了转售市场的问题。这个项目探索了两个主要问题。首先，在存在转售可能性的情况下，不同的拍卖形式在收入和经济效益方面的表现如何？特别是，在存在转售的情况下，一种格式比另一种格式更可取吗？第二，转售的可能性如何影响拍卖中的竞价行为，以及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)是有利的，还是应该阻止转售，甚至禁止转售？对第一个问题的初步研究表明，如果只出售一件物品，而转售是可能的，那么就收入而言，第一价格的密封竞价拍卖比公开递增拍卖更好。这一理论发现在投标人不对称的情况下成立，在没有转售的情况下，两种格式的一般排名都不可用。因此，从方法论的角度来看，转售考虑使得对不对称拍卖的分析-这是一个一般结果很少的领域-更容易处理。该项目第一部分的主要目标是探索这一发现在多大程度上扩展到其他环境-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询问转售限制--例如，FCC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。同样针对不对称第一价格拍卖的初步研究表明，转售实际上会增加收入。然而，它是否会增加社会剩余，似乎取决于不对称的程度。该项目这一部分的主要目标是研究这些调查结果的普遍性和稳健性。

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.