Discriminatory Auction Research Articles

Helping hampered bidders—Do subsidy auctions work as intended?

AbstractThe use of preference or discriminatory auctions, where one class of bidders is offered favored treatment over another class, has received mixed attention in the literature. Research has shown there is often an economic benefit of such policies in procurement auctions thanks to lower costs for buyers as incentives are offered to disadvantaged sellers. In this paper, we study one type of preferential procurement auction: the subsidy. Using a set of controlled experiments, we compare actual bidder behavior to what is predicted in equilibrium and find consistent (but overly aggressive) patterns overall. By testing a common bid strategy assumption, we also identify a behavioral framing bias that may trap sellers in these suboptimal strategies. Finally, we compare subsidies to another common discriminatory mechanism—the price preference—and find evidence that buyers interested in increasing the welfare of disadvantaged sellers should use subsidies instead of price preference auctions, thanks to a surprising difference in outcomes between preference types. Due to the wide use of bid preference auctions to support both policy and social aims, our findings have both financial and societal implications.

Empirical evidence on discrimination in multi-technology renewable energy auctions in Europe

Auctions are a widely used policy instrument to support the deployment of renewable energies (RE). Yet, their complex design raises concerns about explicitly or implicitly discriminatory effects against particular technologies. Such discriminatory effects would distort fair competition, reduce economic efficiency, and potentially violate European Union law.Several studies analysed discriminatory auction design from a theoretical and simulation perspective but actual empirical evidence is limited. Here, we demonstrate the existence of technology discrimination in European RE auctions empirically. We apply a fractional logit model to empirically measure the impact of various auction design elements on the success of two technologies, solar PV and onshore wind, based on 57 European multi-technology RE auctions from 2011–2021.Our results confirm the existence of discriminatory effects of several auction design elements in RE auctions, such as installation size restriction, support duration, realisation period, ceiling price, and financial prequalification. The results are stable against various robustness checks such as varying the countries included, the time frame, and the composition of the regions controlled for.Our findings advance the understanding of explicitly and implicitly discriminatory effects against particular technologies in multi-technology auctions and we propose steps to reduce technology discrimination in future multi-technology RE auctions.

Strategic supply management and mechanism choice in government debt auctions: An empirical analysis from the Philippines

We examine bond auctions in the Philippines by using bid data from around 500 Treasury auctions. The Philippines features a strategic auctioneer who uses both discriminatory and uniform-price auctions, and actively manages supply. Here, discriminatory auctions generate lower borrowing costs, at the expense of concentrating awards among fewer bidders. We observe that the decision to restrict supply is driven by borrowing cost and strength of demand. Bidders adjust for winner’ s curse by submitting bids with higher yield spreads in response to higher volatility and more competitors. Though bidder heterogeneity exists, average auction profits do not significantly differ across bidder types.

Auctions with Privately Known Capacities: Understanding Competition Among Renewables

Abstract We study a multi-unit auction model in which bidders are privately informed about the maximum number of units they are willing to trade (which we refer to as ‘capacity’). No matter how big or small, private information on capacities changes the nature of the equilibrium as compared to when private information is on costs (or valuations). Also, the uniform-price and discriminatory auctions are not revenue equivalent, in contrast to when costs are independently drawn. In particular, with independently drawn capacities (and possibly costs), the discriminatory format reduces payments to firms relative to the uniform-price format. Our analysis is motivated by the performance of future electricity markets in which renewable energies will be predominant, but the set-up also applies to a variety of contexts (from central bank liquidity auctions to emissions trading).

Sovereign Debt Auctions in Turbulent Times

We use a model of multiunit discriminatory auctions with asymmetrically informed risk-averse bidders to analyze Mexican sovereign bond auctions during periods of macroeconomic stress. We argue that the discriminatory protocol provides insurance benefits to the government in bad times because it allows for uninformed bids above the marginal price to be executed at the bid price. Uninformed investors are willing to make such bids if the inframarginal risk premium is large enough to offset the winner's curse. In crisis periods, we infer 1 p.p. lower borrowing costs in the worst states of the world, but 2.2 p.p. higher average costs.

Discriminatory Auction Design for Renewable Energy

Discriminatory Auction Design for Renewable Energy

Discriminatory Auction Design for Renewable Energy the Economics of the German Reference Yield Model

Discriminatory Auction Design for Renewable Energy the Economics of the German Reference Yield Model

Do Pay-As-Bid Auctions Favor Collusion? Evidence from Germany's market for reserve power

We analyze a drastic price increase in the German auction market for reserve power that did not appear to be driven by increased costs. Studying the market structure and bidding strategies using micro-level bidding data, we find a concentrated market with highly pivotal suppliers in an environment with completely inelastic demand and high entry barriers. We provide descriptive evidence that the price increase was triggered by an abuse of the “guess the clearing price” principle of discriminatory auctions via repeated pretended “bad guessing” of the marginal bid by the most dominant supplier. As intentional “bad guessing” of marginal bids is hard to prove, this suggests that the auction design is crucial for the competition authority's monitoring power – an issue that is often neglected in the discussion on the properties of auction designs. In fact, given regulatory threats, the deemed main advantage of pay-as-bid auctions over uniform price auctions and the popular belief that they reduce dominant suppliers' withholding incentives and diminish their ability to tacitly collude may be questioned in non-static settings. This suggests that pay-as-bid auctions may not necessarily reduce incentives for strategic capacity withholding and collusive behavior, but can even increase them when market power is high and demand inelastic, which is the case in virtually all energy markets.

Asymmetric Cost Pass‐Through in Multi‐Unit Procurement Auctions: An Experimental Approach*

We explore input cost pass‐through in multi‐unit procurement auctions. Whether cost shocks are private versus common across firms has important implications for discriminatory, but not uniform price auctions. We provide evidence of asymmetric pass‐through of private cost shocks in discriminatory auctions. Unlike uniform price auctions, revenue‐maximizing bidders in discriminatory auctions ‘pad’ bids close to the expected clearing price for units with costs below that price, but they do not bid below cost on higher cost units. Therefore, if costs are higher than expected, the clearing price rises and if costs are lower than expected, the clearing price remains high.

Different Cost Perspectives for Renewable Energy Support: Assessment of Technology-neutral and Discriminatory Auctions

Different Cost Perspectives for Renewable Energy Support: Assessment of Technology-neutral and Discriminatory Auctions

Emptying blocks: the Hazardous Incentive Scheme Behind Blockchain Fee Formation.

Multiple cryptocurrencies suffer a bottleneck effect: blocks are limited in size and the protocols limit their expected arrival rates. On the other hand, this congestion is creates incentives to set transaction fees. We show that this incentive structure suffers from moral hazard, where miners have incentives induce congestion to increase fees. We present this result using two approaches: Auction Theory and Reinforcement Learning. While Game Theory studies strategic behaviour between rational players, Machine Learning is based on blind players finding optimal strategies by \textit{brute force} iteration of trials. The Auction Theory model presented in this paper is a multiunit discriminatory (or pay-as-bid) auction with single unit demand. We add to the standard model the element of supply reduction, characterize the symmetric equilibrium and present how to expand it as the number of players grows asymptotically. The ML part focuses on Q-learning, a well-known application of reinforcement learning algorithms. The main finding has significant policy implications: decentralization, one of the core strengths of proof-of-work protocols, doesn't necessarily apply to block-level incentives.

Discriminatory Versus Uniform Auction: Evidence From JGB Market

In 2007, the Japanese government changed the format of auctions for 30-year Japanese government bonds (JGB) from uniform to discriminatory. We examine data before and after this change to assess whether this has lowered the borrowing costs of the Japanese government, in the largest government bond market in the world. As Ausubel et al. (2014) described, the general revenue ranking of uniform and discriminatory auctions is an empirical question. Our empirical result shows that this policy change lowered borrowing costs. We also show that a discriminatory auction lowers the borrowing costs when the value of the bidders to JGB tends to be symmetric, which is consistent with the prediction of Ausubel et al. (2014).

Underwriting Government Debt Auctions: Auction Choice and Information Production

In this paper, we examine a novel two-stage mechanism for selling government securities, wherein the dealers underwrite in the first stage the sale of securities, which are auctioned in stage 2 via either a discriminatory auction (DA) or a uniform price auction (UPA). Using proprietary data on auctions during 2006–2013, we find that (a) the first stage underwriting auction generates significant information, including predicting the likelihood of devolvement, and bid shading, and (b) the outcome of the underwriting auction may generate enough asymmetry amongst bidders that may make DA dominate UPA in certain counterfactual situations. We document that the unique two-stage auction design provides a market-driven mechanism to simultaneously insure against auction failures and produce information about the quality of the underlying issue. This paper was accepted by Karl Diether, finance.

Book building and its application in offering shares of equitized State-owned enterprises in Viet Nam

Equitization and divestment continue to be one of the crucial pillars of the economic development strategy over the period 2020-2030. The Vietnamese Government has been completing the legal framework to speed up the process of privatization and divestment over the past 3 years. One of the highlights is the regulation on the application of Book Building (BB) Method to offer state shares in 2018. BB, an effective mechanism to determine the price on the primary market, is encouraged to apply on most markets. However, according to Hanoi Stock Exchange, for four months since Circular 21/2019/BTC-TT was released, 17 announcements of IPOs or divesture of state capital were whole lot sale auction or competitive offering. This implies the popularity of fixed price and discriminatory auction in Vietnam. Moreover, applying BB in Vietnam requires certain adjustments to theories. This paper presents the advantages and disadvantages of BB over fixed price and auction, reviews BB experiences of some economies, and make recommendations on the application of BB in offering state shares in Vietnam. Given that BB is expected to create a transparent and effective pricing mechanism and enhance the success of state share offering, this study indicates some points that need clarifying or adjusting to the current regulation, including (i) initial price and price range; (ii) time for disclosing information and opening order books; (iii) objectives of BB; (iv) cancel the results of BB; (v) selection of underwriters.

Bond Losses and Systemic Risk

This paper documents the existence of primary dealers' losses in Treasury bond markets and investigates how these losses affect dealers' market value. Using a novel data set that tracks more than 2,350 primary-to-secondary transactions, we find that bond losses for primary dealers are prevalent and were severe during the financial crisis. Our results indicate that liquidity constraints are a major source of bond losses observed in primary-to-secondary trades. We also find that financial sector value is correlated with these losses. Using an alternating market experiment, we show that bond losses are higher under discriminatory auctions as compared to uniform auctions.

Uncovering Bidder Behaviour in the German PV Auction Pilot: Insights from Agent-based Modeling

This paper analyses bidder behaviour in the German photovoltaic (PV) auction pilot. It uses a novel approach combining insights from data analysis and decision theory to optimise an agent-based simulation model. We model both a uniform pricing (UP) scheme, a pay-as-bid (PAB) scheme, and a benchmark case, where agents adapt their bidding strategy. The findings are contrasted with empirical auction outcomes. The comparison shows that, especially in the early rounds, bid prices were above the costs—possibly due to uncertainties and false expectations concerning competition. This is particularly visible in the first round. Adapting their expectations to a higher competition level, bidders in the pay-as-bid simulation subsequently decrease their bids. From simulating a separate auction for arable land bidders, we see that this bidder type reduces support costs substantially and that an implicitly discriminatory auction yields more aggressive bids and can induce further cost reductions.

Auction Mechanisms and Treasury Revenue: Evidence from the Chinese Experiment

This paper exploits a large-size auction experiment conducted by two Chinese Government Treasury security issuers-the Chinese Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank-to investigate whether Treasury securities should be sold through uniform or discriminatory auction mechanisms. Based on the outcomes of more than 300 Treasury securities issued through an alternating auction-rule market experiment, we find that yield rates of the two auction formats are not statistically different. Further, these estimates indicate that there is no significant economic difference in terms of revenue between the two auction mechanisms. This result is robust across different bond-yield rate measurements and participation behavior.

The Impact of Subsidies in Asymmetric Procurement Auctions: A Comparison of Theoretical and Experimental Results

The existence of discriminatory auctions where one class of bidders is offered preferential treatment over another class is controversial. Consider the Affirmative Action policies of the FCC and the Buy-American Act policies of the US Government. The political reasons for such policies are obvious. However, research has shown that there is an economic benefit for such policies in the sense that procurement costs to a buyer may actually decrease as incentives are offered to weaker sellers. In this paper, we test the predictions of Rothkopf et al. (2003) where cost weaker sellers are offered a subsidy in the form of additional payment. For various levels of cost disadvantage, Rothkopf et al (2003), present the optimal subsidy level, bidders’ strategies, bidder profitability, and buyer procurement costs. We test these predictions in a series of controlled experiments. This paper is the first to experimentally test these predictions. Due to the wide use of subsidies not only to support social aims but also their potential to reduce the buyer’s costs, our findings have both financial and societal implications.

A Walrasian Theory of Sovereign Debt Auctions with Asymmetric Information

How does investors' information about a country's fundamentals, and the fact that this information may be asymmetrically held, affect a country's financing cost? Motivated by this question, and by the observation that sovereign bonds are usually auctioned in large lots to a large number of potential investors, we develop a novel model of auctions with asymmetric information that relies on price-taking and rational expectations. We first characterize sovereign bond prices for different degrees of asymmetric information under two commonly-used protocols: discriminatory-price auctions and uniform-price auctions. We show that there is trade-off between these protocols if information is sufficiently asymmetric: expected bond yields are higher when pricing is discriminatory, but yield volatility is higher when pricing is uniform. We then study endogenous information acquisition and find that (i) discriminatory auctions may display multiple welfare-ranked informational equilibria, and (ii) investors are less likely to acquire information in uniform auctions.

Discriminatory auctions with resale

We consider multi-unit discriminatory auctions where ex ante symmetric bidders have single-unit demands and resale is allowed after the bidding stage. When bidders use the optimal auction to sell items in the resale stage, the equilibrium in the auction without resale is no longer an equilibrium in an auction with resale. We find a symmetric and monotone equilibrium when there are two units for sale, and, interestingly, we show that there may not be a symmetric and monotone equilibrium if there are more than two units.