DOCSLIB.ORG

CONFLICT and COOPERATION WITHIN an ORGANIZATION: a CASE STUDY of the METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT of SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA by DAVID

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
CONFLICT and COOPERATION WITHIN an ORGANIZATION: a CASE STUDY of the METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT of SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA by DAVID CONFLICT AND COOPERATION WITHIN AN ORGANIZATION: A CASE STUDY OF THE METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA by DAVID JASON ZETLAND B.A. (University of California, Los Angeles) 1991 M.S. (University of California, Davis) 2003 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Agricultural and Resource Economics in the OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS Committee in Charge 2008 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1129046 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1129046 Abstract Back in 1995, one member of a water co- did not change to reflect this scarcity, wa- operative announced it was going to buy wa- ter continued to be treated as a club good ter from an “outside” source. Other mem- when it should have been treated as a pri- bers of the cooperative did not like this idea, vate good. Because MET did not change its and a dispute broke out. After lawsuits, lob- policies for allocating water (take as much as bying and lopsided votes, peace of a sort was you need, at a fixed price, no matter where bought with 235 million dollars of taxpayer it is delivered), inefficiency increased. Argu- money and intense political pressure. Why ments over the policies increased inefficiency did this dispute happen? Was it exceptional even further. or typical? Is it possible that cooperative According to Hart and Moore (1996), members are not cooperative? These ques- cooperatives are efficient (relative to firms) tions are intrinsically interesting to students when members have reasonably homoge- of collective action, but they are more signif- nous preferences. Taking the high correla- icant with this cooperative: The Metropoli- tion between characteristics and preferences tan Water District of Southern California for granted, I quantify heterogeneity among (MET) is one of the world’s largest water members through their dependency on MET utilities, supplying water to 18 million peo- for water, and their heterogeneous depen- ple. dencies imply that they will also have het- In this dissertation, a case study of erogeneous preferences on policies, e.g., how MET, I answer these questions and ex- much storage to build. plain how the 1995 dispute had roots in The dependency result violates Hart and deeper problems. The story has three an- Moore’s necessary and sufficient condition alytical threads: The first traces MET as of “reasonable homogeneity,” but they had a case-history; the second models insti- assumed self-interested members were man- tutional structure and incentives within a aging scarce goods (i.e., goods with excess public corporation; the third bridges the demand at a price of zero). Relaxing these two: linking empirical history and actions assumptions allows for the possibility that at MET to theoretical predictions of mod- social preferences, (i.e., treating others as els. yourself or maximizing group welfare) or The story goes as follows: MET’s co- abundance (i.e., having so much water that operative structure worked well when water the use of one member is not rival to an- was abundant and costs were subsidized for other) might result in MET being an effi- most members. When supply fell and de- cient cooperative—even with members that mand rose, water grew scarce. Since the have heterogeneous preferences. rules governing the management of water Social preferences are tested using eco- i Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1129046 nomic experiments in which water man- MET water is more or equally valuable; de- agers and comparison groups of undergrad- pendency of MET lowers property values uate students play public goods games. Al- for cities; and member-agencies post-1994 though the experimental results indicate (post-drought) land values change by differ- that managers are relatively more cooper- ent amounts. ative than students, they do not achieve an How can MET improve efficiency? I absolute level of cooperation consistent with outline how MET can use internal auctions social preferences. This result—in combina- to allocate water and conveyance among tion with the historical fact that MET water member agencies—reducing conflict over al- stopped being abundant after the 1960s— location, increasing efficiency and generat- leads us to dismiss the possibility that co- ing useful price signals. Even better, auc- operation or abundance could overcome het- tions can complement equity by allocat- erogeneous preferences. MET may have ing marginal water and conveyance left af- been efficient in the 1960s, but it is not to- ter inframarginal water and conveyance are day. allocated on a per capita (“lifeline”) ba- So, how is MET inefficient? MET’s pric- sis. I also describe results from experimen- ing policies are inefficient in multiple ways: tal auctions with water managers and stu- MET fixes prices in the year before they dents that show how managers suffer from take effect; charges the same price for de- stronger endowment effects in a buy-sell livery anywhere (postage stamp prices); and auction but are more competitive in a bid- mixes fixed and variable costs into one price. only auction. Put differently, MET’s prices are inefficient This dissertation is intrinsically impor- because they are based on average cost— tant as a case study of one of the world’s not marginal cost. MET is also inefficient largest water utilities, but it also contains because its cooperative structure is not con- “interesting features” that can be expanded ducive to settling disputes among members; upon or used elsewhere. Dependency can be conflicts over policies are decided by median used to quantify bargaining power among vote, which dissipates the surplus. (or within) other organizations; the experi- Can we measure inefficiency? Perhaps mental quantification of cooperation among some member agencies get more value from MET’s member agency managers can guide water than others? Perhaps MET water other attempts to understand bureaucrats; is more valuable than local water? The the estimate of the impact of water on ur- presence of these effects (or similar effects) ban land values appears to be the first of its would violate a basic definition of economic kind; and—finally—the combination of per- efficiency—equality of marginal benefit. I capita allocation of inframarginal water and use 60 years of panel data to measure the auction for marginal water seems to deliver impact of water supply on assessed land a nice compromise between equity and effi- values. The results support inefficiency: ciency that could be used in many settings. ii Contents List of Tables vii List of Figures ix Glossary xii Acknowledgements xiii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 ThemesinWater................................. 2 1.1.1 Water as a Good . 2 1.1.2 Water as a Human Right . 2 1.1.3 Water as a Tool for Growth . 3 1.1.4 WaterasaPublicService ........................ 3 1.2 AboutMET.................................... 3 1.3 TheWheelingDispute .............................. 4 1.3.1 MET Rejects an Offer.......................... 4 1.3.2 PunishingSDCWA? ........................... 5 1.3.3 Resolution . 6 1.4 AThesisonMET ................................ 6 1.5 Significance .................................... 7 1.6 DissertationOverview .............................. 8 2 MET Today 11 2.1 CooperativeStructure .............................. 11 2.1.1 Governance and Oversight . 11 2.1.2 What Is MET’s Mission? . 13 2.2 WaterSupplies .................................. 14 2.2.1 Costs of MET Water . 14 2.3 RevenueStructure ................................ 15 2.3.1 Rate Classes . 17 2.3.2 Prices and Equilibrium . 18 2.3.3 EfficientPricing ............................. 20 2.4 Demand Management . 20 2.4.1 Elasticity . 21 iii 2.4.2 Preferential Rights . 21 2.4.3 Purchase Orders . 23 2.5 Summary ..................................... 23 3 MET’s History 25 3.1 LA Sets the Stage . 25 3.2 FromPowertoMET............................... 26 3.2.1 Opposition . 27 3.2.2 Add Water . 27 3.2.3 Bids for Hoover Power . 28 3.2.4 Colorado River Aqueduct . 28 3.3 DumpingWater.................................. 28 3.3.1 Miscalculating Demand . 30 3.3.2 Cross-Subsidies.............................. 30 3.3.3 Free Riding and Expansion . 31 3.3.4 SDCWAtotheRescue? ......................... 31 3.4 GloryYears.................................... 32 3.5 Irrational Los Angeles? . 34 3.6 The End of Abundance . 36 3.7 ChangesinSupplies ............................... 36 3.7.1 The Colorado River . 36 3.7.2 The State Water Project . 37 3.8 Changes in Demand . 39 3.9 Changes in Votes . 40 3.10 Changes in Culture . 41 3.11 Changes in Cost . 42 3.12 The Big Drought . 43 3.13SDCWADefects ................................. 45 3.14 Barriers to Change . 45 3.14.1 Monopoly Power . 47 3.14.2 Principal-Agent Problems . 47 3.14.3 Agricultural Water . 47 3.15 Summary . 48 4 Analysis of Efficiency at MET 49 4.1 “Cooperate” . 50 4.1.1 Type, Preference & Action . 50 4.1.2 Organization, Game & Outcome . 51 4.2 EfficientForm................................... 52 4.2.1 EfficientCooperatives .......................... 52 4.2.2 Social or Selfish . 54 4.2.3 Abundant or Scarce . 55 4.2.4 Homo- or Heterogeneous . 55 4.2.5 Forms of Inefficiency........................... 56 4.3 MakingDecisions................................. 57 iv 4.3.1 Causes of Conflict . 58 4.3.2 Examples of Conflict . 58 4.4 Inefficient Allocation . 59 4.4.1 Ramsey and Tier Prices . 59 4.4.2 Postage Stamp Pricing . 60 4.4.3 Setting Prices for Next Year . 62 4.4.4 Total Cost Control . 62 4.5 Summary ..................................... 63 5 Experiments in Cooperation 65 5.1 HowExperimentsWork ............................. 66 5.1.1 Cooperation Games . 66 5.1.2 Experimental Validity . 67 5.1.3 Internal Validity . 68 5.1.4 External Validity . 68 5.2 ExperimentalDesign............................... 69 5.2.1 DeterminingType ............................ 71 5.2.2 Group Cooperation . 72 5.2.3 Hypotheses . 74 5.2.4 Session Details . 74 5.3 Results....................................... 74 5.4 Discussion....................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Pricing Rule in a Clock Auction
    Decision Analysis informs ® Vol. 7, No. 1, March 2010, pp. 40–57 issn 1545-8490 eissn 1545-8504 10 0701 0040 doi 10.1287/deca.1090.0161 © 2010 INFORMS Pricing Rule in a Clock Auction Peter Cramton, Pacharasut Sujarittanonta Department of Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742 {[email protected], [email protected]} e analyze a discrete clock auction with lowest-accepted-bid (LAB) pricing and provisional winners, as Wadopted by India for its 3G spectrum auction. In a perfect Bayesian equilibrium, the provisional winner shades her bid, whereas provisional losers do not. Such differential shading leads to inefficiency. An auction with highest-rejected-bid (HRB) pricing and exit bids is strategically simple, has no bid shading, and is fully efficient. In addition, it has higher revenues than the LAB auction, assuming profit-maximizing bidders. The bid shading in the LAB auction exposes a bidder to the possibility of losing the auction at a price below the bidder’s value. Thus, a fear of losing at profitable prices may cause bidders in the LAB auction to bid more aggressively than predicted, assuming profit-maximizing bidders. We extend the model by adding an anticipated loser’s regret to the payoff function. Revenue from the LAB auction yields higher expected revenue than the HRB auction when bidders’ fear of losing at profitable prices is sufficiently strong. This would provide one explanation why India, with an expressed objective of revenue maximization, adopted the LAB auction for its upcoming 3G spectrum auction, rather than the seemingly superior HRB auction. Key words: auctions; clock auctions; spectrum auctions; behavioral economics; market design History: Received on April 16, 2009.
    [Show full text]
  • Integrating the Structural Auction Approach and Traditional Measures of Market Power
    Integrating the Structural Auction Approach and Traditional Measures of Market Power Emílio Tostão Department of Agricultural Economics Oklahoma State University 535 Ag. Hall, Stillwater, OK 74078-6026 Email: [email protected] Chanjin Chung Department of Agricultural Economics Oklahoma State University 322 Ag. Hall, Stillwater, OK 74078-6026 Email: [email protected] B. Wade Brorsen Department of Agricultural Economics Oklahoma State University 414 Ag. Hall, Stillwater, OK 74078-6026 Email: [email protected] Selected Paper prepared for presentation at the American Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Long Beach, California, July 23-26, 2006. Copyright by Emílio Tostão , Chanjin Chung, and B . Wade Brorsen . All rights reserved . Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non commercial purposes by any means , provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies . 1 Integrating the Structural Auction Approach and Traditional Measures of Market Power Abstract This study asks the question, what is the relationship between traditional models of market power and structural auction models? An encompassing model is derived that considers both price markdowns due to bid shading during an auction and price markdowns at the industry-level due to imperfect competition. Data from a cattle procurement experimental market is used to compare the appropriateness of the two alternative theories. Regression results show that while the number of firms is more important than the number of bidders on lot of cattle in explaining pricing behavior in the game, the number of bidders does contain some unique information and should be included in the model. Both the traditional NEIO and structural auction approaches overestimated the true markdowns possibly due to failure to account for the winners curse.
    [Show full text]
  • Demand Reduction and Inefficiency in Multi-Unit Auctions
    The Review of Economic Studies Advance Access published July 28, 2014 Review of Economic Studies (2014) 0, 1–35 doi:10.1093/restud/rdu023 © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Review of Economic Studies Limited. Demand Reduction and Inefficiency in Multi-Unit Auctions Downloaded from LAWRENCE M. AUSUBEL University of Maryland http://restud.oxfordjournals.org/ PETER CRAMTON University of Maryland MAREK PYCIA UCLA MARZENA ROSTEK University of Wisconsin-Madison at University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries on October 27, 2014 and MAREK WERETKA University of Wisconsin-Madison First version received July 2010; final version accepted April 2014 (Eds.) Auctions often involve the sale of many related goods: Treasury, spectrum, and electricity auctions are examples. In multi-unit auctions, bids for marginal units may affect payments for inframarginal units, giving rise to “demand reduction” and furthermore to incentives for shading bids differently across units. We establish that such differential bid shading results generically in ex post inefficient allocations in the uniform-price and pay-as-bid auctions. We also show that, in general, the efficiency and revenue rankings of the two formats are ambiguous. However, in settings with symmetric bidders, the pay-as-bid auction often outperforms. In particular, with diminishing marginal utility, symmetric information and linearity, it yields greater expected revenues. We explain the rankings through multi-unit effects, which have no counterparts in auctions with unit demands. We attribute the new incentives separately to multi-unit (but constant) marginal utility and to diminishing marginal utility. We also provide comparisons with the Vickrey auction. Key words: Multi-Unit Auctions, Demand Reduction, Treasury Auctions, Electricity Auctions JEL Codes: D44, D82, D47, L13, L94 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Countering the Winner's Curse: Optimal Auction Design in a Common Value Model
    Theoretical Economics 15 (2020), 1399–1434 1555-7561/20201399 Countering the winner’s curse: Optimal auction design in a common value model Dirk Bergemann Department of Economics, Yale University Benjamin Brooks Department of Economics, University of Chicago Stephen Morris Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology We characterize revenue maximizing mechanisms in a common value environ- ment where the value of the object is equal to the highest of the bidders’ indepen- dent signals. If the revenue maximizing solution is to sell the object with proba- bility 1, then an optimal mechanism is simply a posted price, namely, the highest price such that every type of every bidder is willing to buy the object. If the object is optimally sold with probability less than 1, then optimal mechanisms skew the allocation toward bidders with lower signals. The resulting allocation induces a “winner’s blessing,” whereby the expected value conditional on winning is higher than the unconditional expectation. By contrast, standard auctions that allocate to the bidder with the highest signal (e.g., the first-price, second-price, or English auctions) deliver lower revenue because of the winner’s curse generated by the allocation. Our qualitative results extend to more general common value envi- ronments with a strong winner’s curse. Keywords. Optimal auction, common values, maximum game, posted price, re- serve price, revenue equivalence. JEL classification. C72, D44, D82, D83. 1. Introduction Whenever there is interdependence in bidders’ willingness to pay for a good, each bid- der must carefully account for that interdependence in determining how they should bid. A classic motivating example concerns wildcatters competing for an oil tract in a Dirk Bergemann: [email protected] Benjamin Brooks: [email protected] Stephen Morris: [email protected] We acknowledge financial support through National Science Foundation Grants SES 1459899 and SES 2001208.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Existence of Equilibrium in Bayesian Games Without Complementarities
    ON THE EXISTENCE OF EQUILIBRIUM IN BAYESIAN GAMES WITHOUT COMPLEMENTARITIES By Idione Meneghel and Rabee Tourky August 2019 Revised November 2019 COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 2190R COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS YALE UNIVERSITY Box 208281 New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8281 http://cowles.yale.edu/ ON THE EXISTENCE OF EQUILIBRIUM IN BAYESIAN GAMES WITHOUT COMPLEMENTARITIES IDIONE MENEGHEL Australian National University RABEE TOURKY Australian National University Abstract. This paper presents new results on the existence of pure-strategy Bayesian equilibria in specified functional forms. These results broaden the scope of methods developed by Reny (2011) well beyond monotone pure strate- gies. Applications include natural models of first-price and all-pay auctions not covered by previous existence results. To illustrate the scope of our results, we provide an analysis of three auctions: (i) a first-price auction of objects that are heterogeneous and imperfect substitutes; (ii) a first-price auction in which bidders’ payoffs have a very general interdependence structure; and (iii) an all-pay auction with non-monotone equilibrium. Keywords: Bayesian games, monotone strategies, pure-strategy equilibrium, auctions. 1. Introduction Equilibrium behavior in general Bayesian games is not well understood. While there is an extensive literature on equilibrium existence, that literature imposes sub- stantive restrictions on the structure of the Bayesian game. In particular, previous existence results require some version of the following assumptions: (1) “weak quasi-supermodularity:” informally, the coordinates of a a player’s own action vector need to be complementary; and (2) “weak single-crossing:” informally, a player’s incremental returns of actions are nondecreasing in her types.
    [Show full text]
  • ABSTRACT ESSAYS on AUCTION DESIGN Haomin Yan Doctor of Philosophy, 2018 Dissertation Directed By: Professor Lawrence M. Ausubel
    ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: ESSAYS ON AUCTION DESIGN Haomin Yan Doctor of Philosophy, 2018 Dissertation directed by: Professor Lawrence M. Ausubel Department of Economics This dissertation studies the design of auction markets where bidders are un- certain of their own values at the time of bidding. A bidder's value may depend on other bidders' private information, on total quantity of items allocated in the auction, or on the auctioneer's private information. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to auction theory and summarizes the main contribution of each following chapter. Chapter 2 of this dissertation ex- tends the theoretical study of position auctions to an interdependent values model in which each bidder's value depends on its opponents' information as well as its own information. I characterize the equilibria of three standard position auctions under this information structure, including the Generalized Second Price (GSP) auctions, Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) auctions, and the Generalized English Auc- tions (GEA). I first show that both GSP and VCG auctions are neither efficient nor optimal under interdependent values. Then I propose a modification of these two auctions by allowing bidders to condition their bids on positions to implement ef- ficiency. I show that the modified auctions proposed in this chapter are not only efficient, but also maximize the search engine's revenue. While the uncertainty of each bidder about its own value comes from the presence of common component in bidders ex-post values in an interdependent values model, bidders can be uncertain about their values when their values depend on the entire allocation of the auction and when their values depend on the auctioneer's private information.
    [Show full text]
  • Discriminatory Versus Uniform-Price Auctions
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Monostori, Zoltán Working Paper Discriminatory versus uniform-price auctions MNB Occasional Papers, No. 111 Provided in Cooperation with: Magyar Nemzeti Bank, The Central Bank of Hungary, Budapest Suggested Citation: Monostori, Zoltán (2014) : Discriminatory versus uniform-price auctions, MNB Occasional Papers, No. 111, Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Budapest This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/141995 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu Zoltán Monostori Discriminatory versus uniform-price auctions MNB Occasional Papers 111 2014 Zoltán Monostori Discriminatory versus uniform-price auctions MNB Occasional Papers 111 2014 The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official view of the central bank of Hungary (Magyar Nemzeti Bank).
    [Show full text]
  • Bid Shading by Win-Rate Estimation and Surplus Maximization
    Bid Shading by Win-Rate Estimation and Surplus Maximization Shengjun Pan, Brendan Kitts, Tian Zhou, Hao He, Bharatbhushan Shetty, Aaron Flores, Djordje Gligorijevic, Junwei Pan, Tingyu Mao, San Gultekin and Jianlong Zhang Verizon Media Sunnyvale, California {alanpan,brendan.kitts,tian.zhou,hao.he,bharatbs,aaron.flores}@verizonmedia.com {djordje,jwpan,tingyu.mao,sgultekin,jianlong}@verizonmedia.com ABSTRACT Google famously used Second Price Auctions for its Adwords and This paper describes a new win-rate based bid shading algorithm Adsense auctions, and, in 2017, generated 90% of its revenue from (WR) that does not rely on the minimum-bid-to-win feedback from a Second Price Auctions [12]. However, there was a dramatic shift Sell-Side Platform (SSP). The method uses a modified logistic regres- in online advertising between 2018 and 2019. As of 2020, almost sion to predict the profit from each possible shaded bid price. The all major display ad auctions have switched from Second to First function form allows fast maximization at run-time, a key require- Price Auctions (FPAs) [13, 14]. Several factors conspired to drive ment for Real-Time Bidding (RTB) systems. We report production the industry towards the adoption of FPA, including the widespread results from this method along with several other algorithms. We growth of header bidding with its incompatibility with SPAs [18], found that bid shading, in general, can deliver significant value increased demand for transparency and accountability [7, 11, 26, 29], to advertisers, reducing price per impression to about 55% of the and yield concerns [3, 21, 25]. unshaded cost. Further, the particular approach described in this Unfortunately for advertisers, First Price Auctions leave private paper captures 7% more profit for advertisers, than do benchmark value bidders susceptible to over-paying.
    [Show full text]
  • Projection and Overbidding in Auctions
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Breitmoser, Yves Working Paper Knowing Me, Imagining You: Projection and Overbidding in Auctions Discussion Paper, No. 36 Provided in Cooperation with: University of Munich (LMU) and Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190: Rationality and Competition Suggested Citation: Breitmoser, Yves (2017) : Knowing Me, Imagining You: Projection and Overbidding in Auctions, Discussion Paper, No. 36, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition, München und Berlin This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/185706 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu Knowing Me, Imagining You: Projection and Overbidding in Auctions Yves Breitmoser (Humboldt University Berlin) Discussion Paper No.
    [Show full text]
  • Conference Agenda 73Rd Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance
    73rd Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance - ConfTool Pr... Page 1 of 71 Conference Agenda 73rd Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance Date: Thursday, 17/Aug/2017 3:30pm - 6:00pm Registration (also open on congress days from 8 am on) IIRC, Floor next to Ito Hall 3:30pm - 6:30pm IIPF Board of Management Meeting I (for Board only) Kojima, Kojima Conference Room 7:30pm - 9:30pm IIPF Board of Management Dinner (on invitation only) Ueno Seiyoken Restaurant https://www.conftool.pro/iipf2017/index.php?page=browseSessions&print=yes&do... 27.11.2017 73rd Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance - ConfTool Pr... Page 2 of 71 Date: Friday, 18/Aug/2017 9:00am - 9:30am Opening Ceremony Session Chair: Joel Slemrod, University of Michigan IIRC, Ito Hall 9:30am - 10:30am Plenary I: Keynote Lecture Takatoshi Ito (Columbia University) on "Government Bonds as Inter-generational Transfers of Wealth and Liabilities: Case of Japan" IIRC, Ito Hall Session Chair: Yukihiro Nishimura, Osaka University 10:30am - 11:00am Coffee Break IIRC, BF2 Multi- purpose space 11:00am - 1:00pm A01: Corporate Taxation and R&D Session Chair: Andreas Lichter, IZA IIRC, Ito Gallery 1 11:00am - 11:30am Corporate Tax Asymmetries and R&D: Evidence from the Introduction of Consolidated Tax Returns in Japan Masanori Orihara Waseda University, Japan Economic theory dating back to Domar and Musgrave (1944, Quarterly Journal of Economics 58, 388- 422) suggests that the tax treatment of gains and losses can affect incentives for firms to undertake high- risk investments.
    [Show full text]
  • Belief Extraction in Mechanism Design
    BELIEF EXTRACTION IN MECHANISM DESIGN Benjamin Aaron Brooks A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS Advisors: Dilip Abreu and Stephen Morris June 2014 c Copyright by Benjamin Aaron Brooks, 2014. All rights reserved. Abstract In many settings, the designer of an institution is less informed about the economy than are the agents who will ultimately participate in that institution. This dissertation explores how such an uninformed designer can learn features of the economy that are common knowledge among the agents and use the extracted information to design better institutions. Chapters 1 and 2 study how an uninformed seller can induce potential buyers to reveal the revenue maximizing reservation price for an auction. Chapter 1 explores mechanisms in which a seller runs a sealed-bid second-price auction and simultaneously surveys the buyers' beliefs about others' valuations. The seller offers bets that incentivize truthful reporting of beliefs, and for a general class of environments, truth-telling is the unique equilibrium. Losing bidders' reports are used to set an interim optimal reserve price for the winner. As a result, these mechanisms guarantee the seller an optimal worst-case revenue-share of the efficient surplus. Chapter 2 considers sealed-bid second-price auctions in which instead of re- porting beliefs, each bidder recommends a reservation price to be used when they lose the auction. If the recommendation is used, the bidder is rewarded with a small share of revenue. Revenue sharing aligns the incentives of the seller and los- ing buyers, but creates an incentive to \throw" the auction when a buyer expects to win at a price close to his valuation.
    [Show full text]
  • Bid Shading and Bidder Surplus in the U.S. Treasury Auction System ∗
    Bid Shading and Bidder Surplus in the U.S. Treasury Auction System ∗ Ali Horta¸csuy Jakub Kastlz Allen Zhangx November 13, 2014 (PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE: PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR DISTRIBUTE WITHOUT PERMISSION.) We analyze detailed bidding data from auctions of Treasury bills and notes conducted between July 2009 and October 2013. The U.S. Treasury uses a uniform price auction system, which we model building on the share auction model of Wilson (1979) and Kastl (2012). Our model takes into account informational asymmetries introduced by the primary dealership and indirect bidding system employed by the U.S. Treasury. Building on the methods de- veloped by Horta¸csu(2002), Horta¸csuand McAdams (2010), Kastl (2011), and Horta¸csuand Kastl (2012), we estimate the amount of bid shading undertaken by the bidders under the assumption of bidder optimization. Our method also enables to us to estimate the marginal valuations of bidders that rationalize the observed bids under a private value framework. We find that primary dealers consistently bid higher yields in the auctions compared to direct and indirect bidders. Our model allows us to decompose this difference into two components: difference in demand/willingness-to- pay, and difference in ability to shade bids. We find that while primary dealer willingness-to-pay is similar to or even higher than direct and indirect bidders', their ability to bid-shade is higher, leading to higher yield bids. By computing the area under bidders' demand curves, we can also quantify the surplus that bidders derive from the auctions. We find that total bidder surplus across the sample period was, on average, 2.3 basis points.
    [Show full text]