Auction Design for Allocating Allowances and Licenses: Consignment and Price Containment Mechanisms

分配配额和许可证的拍卖设计拍卖越来越多地用于分配稀缺的公共资源或限制产生外部性的活动，如城市交通拥堵。例如，美国和欧盟的监管机构广泛使用拍卖来分配“配额”，以限制特定类型的排放。其他例子包括出售汽车牌照以限制交通拥堵，出售无线通信服务的频谱，或出售能源租赁或证券等政府资产。在透明度、公共收入和选择效率（确保低成本供应商或高价值用户更有可能获得许可）方面，某些类型的拍卖可能比其他类型的拍卖更好。然而，拍卖业绩可能对潜在的市场和信息条件很敏感，很难用标准的数学和统计方法进行建模。各种拍卖设计的性质可以用实验室模拟来评估，使用财务动机的对象。在实验室里容易操纵的拍卖不太可能在现场表现良好。此类实验可用于在实施前的早期阶段检测设计缺陷和改进，并通过在压力环境中测试新的拍卖程序来跳出常规思维。拟议的实验旨在评估政府在相当广泛的环境中销售“许可证”的替代拍卖过程，这些环境包括排放、证券、广播频率和租赁。为特定政策问题量身定制的拍卖可以使人们更好地理解经济机构如何调节战略行为，以产生期望的福利和增加收入的结果。例如，了解在同一次拍卖中既可以出售（寄售）又可以投标购买的参与者的行为，对于设计回购许可证（例如频谱或捕鱼权）并同时将其重新包装以出售给更高效的用户的拍卖非常重要。拟议的项目范围还包括持续发展以网络为基础的市场实验，以及经济学和其他社会科学的相关教材。这些基于网络的实验将继续在Veconlab网站上免费提供。

Auction Design for Allocating Allowances and LicensesAuctions are being increasingly used to allocate scarce public resources or to limit externality-producing activities like urban traffic congestion. Regulatory agencies in the US and the EU, for example, use auctions extensively to allocate "allowances" that limit particular types of emissions. Other examples include the sale of auto licenses to limit traffic congestion, the sale spectrum for wireless communications services, or the sale of government assets like energy leases or securities. Some types of auctions may be better than others in terms of transparency, public revenue generation, and selection efficiency (ensuring that low-cost providers or high-value users are more likely to obtain permits). Auction performance, however, may be sensitive to underlying market and information conditions in ways that are difficult to model using standard mathematical and statistical methods. The properties of various auction designs can be evaluated with laboratory simulations using financially motivated subjects. An auction that is easily manipulated in the lab is unlikely to perform well in the field. Such experiments can be used to detect design flaws and improvements at an early stage, before implementation, and to think outside the box by testing novel auction procedures in stressful environments. The proposed experiments are designed to evaluate alternative auction processes for government sales of "permits" in a fairly wide class of settings that cover emissions, securities, broadcast frequencies, and leases. Auctions that are tailored to particular policy issues can result in a greater understanding of how economic institutions moderate strategic behavior to produce desired welfare and revenue-enhancing outcomes. For example, an understanding of the behavior of participants who can both sell (consign) and bid to buy in the same auction would be important for the design of auctions that repurchase licenses (e.g. spectrum or fishing rights) and simultaneously repackage them for sale to more efficient users. The proposed scope of the project also includes the sustained development of web-based market experiments and associated teaching materials for economics and other social sciences. These web-based experiments will continue to be freely available on the Veconlab website.