We analyse procurement auctions in which sellers are distinguished on the basis of the ratios of quality per unit of money that they offer. Sellers are privately informed on the offered quality of the technology or good. We assume that the procurer cannot perfectly identify the best offer. Thus, with positive and decreasing probability, the second, third, etc. best ratio offered is selected as the winner of the auction. We model the decision process as based on a general noisy ranking of offers. We show that, although the problem seems to be analytically intractable in general, there exists a simple symmetric, pure-strategy equilibrium in which everyone follows the simple heuristic to match the same "focal" price-quality ratio.
Innovation ist von zentraler Bedeutung für Entwicklung und Wirtschaftswachstum. Innovation findet in einem institutionellen Rahmen statt. Auktionen und auktionsähnliche Mechanismen sind Institutionen. Sie organisieren Transaktionen zwischen ökonomischen Agenten. Auktionen enthüllen private Information indem sie Wettbewerb zwischen Agenten erzeugen. Wenn sie günstig gestaltet werden, dann nutzen sie die enthüllte private Information zur Erfüllung bestimmter Ziele, wie z.B. Gewinnmaximierung oder Effizienz. In drei Aufsätzen untersucht diese Dissertation die Verwendung von Auktionen im Kontext von Innovation. Kapitel 1 betrachtet die übliche Praxis der öffentlichen Subventionsvergabe an private Unternehmen. Wir weisen auf Nachteile dieser Praxis hin und machen Verbesserungsvorschläge, die man einzeln oder in Kombination anwenden kann. Unsere Vorschläge wurden mit Hilfe von Laborexperimenten und Simulation getestet. Die Ergebnisse lassen vermuten, dass unsere Vorschläge eine erhebliche Verbesserung der Subventionsvergabe ermöglichen. Kapitel 2 betrachtet den Verkauf, bzw. die Versteigerung, von Lizenzen zur Nutzung einer patentierten Innovation an Unternehmen in einem oligopolistischen Markt. Das Kapitel analysiert eine modifizierte Lizenzauktion, die profitabler ist als die in der Literatur untersuchten Mechanismen. Bei dieser Auktion wird eine begrenzte Anzahl Royalty-Verträge (Royalty = mengenabhängige Lizenzgebühren) versteigert und die Verlierer der Auktion erhalten ebenfalls die Option auf Royalty-Verträge. Kapitel 3 untersucht Innovations-Turniere. Zwei bekannte Institutionen, Festpreis-Turnier und Scoring-Auktion, werden mit einer Auktion kombiniert, in der um die Teilnahme am Turnier geboten wird (entry auction). Diese Variante wurde in der Literatur vorgeschlagen. Wir charakterisieren Bayesianische Nash-Gleichgewichte bei denen die beiden Mechanismen zu gleichartigen Ergebnissen führen. ; Innovation is central to development and economic growth. Innovation happens within some institutional framework. Auctions and auction-like mechanisms are institutions that organize transactions between economic agents. In the face of private information, they provide a means of revealing part of that information by inducing competition between agents. If well designed, they make use of the revealed information in order to achieve a certain objective, e.g., to maximize profit or to allocate efficiently. In three essays, this dissertation studies the use of auctions in the context of innovation. Chapter 1 looks at the widely used practice of allocating government R&D subsidies to private companies. We point out flaws of that practice and propose improvements that can be adopted separately or in combination. Our proposals are tested in controlled lab experiments and by simulation. The results suggest that adopting the proposals might substantially improve the allocation of subsidies. Chapter 2 revisits the literature on the sale, and, in particular, auctioning, of patent licenses by an innovator to a downstream oligopoly. It analyzes a modified auction that turns out to be more profitable than many other mechanisms that have been analyzed in the literature. There, a restricted number of royalty contracts is auctioned while all losers of the auction are granted the right to sign a royalty contract. Chapter 3 looks at R&D tournaments. It starts from two well-known auction institutions, the fixed-prize tournament and the scoring auction. It combines both with an entry auction, a feature that has been proposed in the literature. We characterize Bayesian Nash equilibria such that both mechanisms are equivalent in a number of ways.
We revisit the classical result that taxation of private consumption is distortionary and therefore precludes the efficient provision of public goods. We introduce a nonlinear consumption tax which we call a 'tax lottery'. Under this scheme, an ad-valorem consumption tax is supplemented with a lottery in which consumers can win cash prizes. The winning probabilities in this lottery depend on all consumers' private good consumption decisions. We show that for a given ad-valorem tax, an appropriately designed lottery can implement an efficient allocation in pure-strategy Nash equilibrium. The lottery component corrects the distortion in private consumption due to the ad-valorem tax, while the resulting tax revenue is sufficient to efficiently provide the public good and pay out the lottery prize. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]
Decision-making processes are studied using non-standard all-pay structures. Our interest is motivated by regulatory, political, legal, military, and economic applications in which individual actions determine the consequences for a larger group or the general public. The common features of these examples are a competitive environment, a winner-takes-all reward structure, and some form of all-pay-all payment rule. Adapted from the source document.
We study decision making processes with non-standard all-pay structures. We motivate this interest through a group of regulatory, political, legal, military, and economic applications where individual actions determine the consequences for a larger group or the public. The common features of these examples are a competitive environment, winner-take-all reward structure, and some form of all-pay-all payment rule.
