Highlights
Highlights (without abstracts)
Combinatorial Auctions, (with Yoav Shoham and Richard Steinberg) MIT Press, 2006.
“Demand Reduction and Inefficiency in Multi-Unit Auctions,” (with Lawrence M. Ausubel) Working Paper, University of Maryland, July 2002.
“The FCC Spectrum Auctions: An Early Assessment,” Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 6:3, 431-495, 1997.
“Strikes and Holdouts in Wage Bargaining: Theory and Data,” (with Joseph S. Tracy) American Economic Review, 82, 100–121, 1992.
“Strategic Delay in Bargaining with Two-Sided Uncertainty,” Review of Economic Studies, 59, 205–225, 1992.
“Dissolving a Partnership Efficiently,” (with Robert Gibbons and Paul Klemperer) Econometrica, 55, 615–632, 1987.
Highlights (with abstracts)
Combinatorial Auctions, (with Yoav Shoham and Richard Steinberg) MIT Press, 2006.
A comprehensive book on combinatorial auctions―auctions in which bidders can bid on packages of items. The book consists of original material intended for researchers, students, and practitioners of auction design. It includes a foreword by Vernon Smith, an introduction to combinatorial auctions, and twenty-three cross-referenced chapters in five parts. Part I covers mechanisms, such as the Vickrey auction and the ascending proxy auction. Part II is on bidding and efficiency issues. Part III examines computational issues and algorithmic considerations, especially the winner determination problem―how to identify the (tentative) winning set of bids that maximizes revenue. Part IV discusses implementation and methods of testing the performance of combinatorial auctions, including simulation and experiment. Part V considers four important applications: airport runway access, trucking, bus routes, and industrial procurement. The chapters develop and apply a unified language, integrating ideas from economics, operations research, and computer science. A glossary defines the central terms. The contributors are Lawrence Ausubel, Michael Ball, Martin Bichler, Sushil Bikhchandani, Craig Boutilier, Estelle Cantillon, Chris Caplice, Peter Cramton, Andrew Davenport, George Donohue, Karla Hoffman, Gail Hohner, Jayant Kalagnanam, Ailsa Land, Daniel Lehmann, Kevin Leyton-Brown, Dinesh Menon, Paul Milgrom, Rudolf Müller, Noam Nisan, Eugene Nudelman, Joseph Ostroy, David Parkes, Aleksandar Pekec, Martin Pesendorfer, Susan Powell, Amir Ronen, Michael Rothkopf, Tuomas Sandholm, Ilya Segal, Yossi Sheffi, Yoav Shoham, Richard Steinberg, Susara van den Heever, Thomas Wilson, and Makoto Yokoo.
“Demand Reduction and Inefficiency in Multi-Unit Auctions,” (with Lawrence M. Ausubel) Working Paper, University of Maryland, July 2002.
Auctions typically involve the sale of many related goods. Treasury, spectrum and electricity auctions are examples. In auctions where bidders pay the market-clearing price for items won, large bidders have an incentive to reduce demand in order to pay less for their winnings. This incentive creates an inefficiency in multiple-item auctions. Large bidders reduce demand for additional items and so sometimes lose to smaller bidders with lower values. We demonstrate this inefficiency in an auction model which allows interdependent values. We also establish that the ranking of the uniform-price and pay-as-bid auctions is ambiguous in both revenue and efficiency terms. Bidding behavior in spectrum auctions, electricity auctions, and experiments highlights the empirical importance of demand reduction.
“The FCC Spectrum Auctions: An Early Assessment,” Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 6:3, 431-495, 1997.
This paper analyzes six spectrum auctions conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from July 1994 to May 1996. These auctions were simultaneous multiple-round auctions in which collections of licenses were auctioned simultaneously. This auction form proved remarkably successful. Similar items sold for similar prices and bidders successfully formed efficient aggregations of licenses. Bidding behavior differed substantially in the auctions. The extent of bidder competition and price uncertainty played an important role in determining behavior. Bidding credits and installment payments also played a major role in several of the auctions.
“Strikes and Holdouts in Wage Bargaining: Theory and Data,” (with Joseph S. Tracy) American Economic Review, 82, 100–121, 1992.
We develop a private-information model of union contract negotiations in which disputes signal a firm’s willingness to pay. Previous models have assumed that all labor disputes take the form of a strike. Yet a prominent feature of U.S. collective bargaining is the holdout: negotiations often continue without a strike after the contract has expired. Production continues with workers paid according to the expired contract. We analyze the union’s decision to strike or hold out and highlight its importance to strike activity. Strikes are more likely to occur after a drop in the real wage or a decline in unemployment.
“Strategic Delay in Bargaining with Two-Sided Uncertainty,” Review of Economic Studies, 59, 205–225, 1992.
The role of strategic delay is analyzed in an infinite-horizon alternating-offer model of bargaining. A buyer and seller are engaged in the trade of a single object. Both bargainers have private information about their own preferences and are impatient in that delaying agreement is costly. An equilibrium is constructed in which the bargainers signal the strength of their bargaining positions by delaying prior to making an offer. A bargainer expecting large gains from trade is more impatient than one expecting small gains, and hence makes concessions earlier on. Trade occurs whenever gains from trade exist, but due to the private information, only after costly delay.
“Dissolving a Partnership Efficiently,” (with Robert Gibbons and Paul Klemperer) Econometrica, 55, 615–632, 1987.
Several partners jointly own an asset that may be traded among them. Each partner has a valuation for the asset; the valuations are known privately and drawn independently from a common probability distribution. We characterize the set of all incentive-compatible and interim-individually-rational trading mechanisms, and give a simple necessary and sufficient condition for such mechanisms to dissolve the partnership ex post efficiently. A bidding game is constructed that achieves such dissolution whenever it is possible. Despite incomplete information about the valuation of the asset, a partnership can be dissolved ex post efficiently provided no single partner owns too large a share; this contrasts with Myerson and Satterthwaite’s result that ex post efficiency cannot be achieved when the asset is owned by a single party.