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In a previous post I wrote on my experience as a consultant to participants in auctions. I was interested to hear the other side of the coin: how do the ones who set the rule of the auction perceive the competitive situation they are in charge of. To answer this question I met Dorit Levy Tyller, a well known Israeli advocate who has decades of auctions in her professional past.
According to Ms. Levy Tyller, the issue that bothers her most is coordination among the bidders. In a small country like Israel, in which everybody knows everybody else and have friends who know the rest, participants do their best to talk, exchange information, and dissuade others from increasing their bid. When the bidders are all present at the same hall, the auction turns into an oriental bazaar with a lot of psychological pressure on participants.
To overcome this difficulty, Ms. Levy Tyller assigns each participant to a different room and asks the participants to arrive to their designated rooms at different times. During the auction she moves with her team from one room to the next, informing each participant of the current highest bid and asking them whether they increase their bid. This is a slow process that requires the participants’ trust in the auctioneer, a trust that she gained with the dozens of auctions she had already organized.
What are the issues that affect the participants’ behavior? According to Ms. Levy Tyller, the expectation to win the auction and the tension that builds along the process causes the bidders to increase their bids. Pressure from other participants, on the other hand, hinders price increase.
Most winners are the calculated and level-headed participants. Anxious bidders who make plenty of noise usually quit before the end. Moreover, those who come prepared and know well the status of the auctioned item, tend to win more often.
At the end of our conversation Ms. Levy Tyller admitted that I was the first game theory consultant she ever met. I take it as a good sign: the utility function of game theorists puts higher weight to research and teaching than to consulting jobs. I am glad to be part of this group.
Trump’s rise in the republican polls puzzles many. It shouldn’t. He is the Putin that some republicans have longed for. Here is a sampling:
Bush II:
I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.
Mike Rogers, GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee:
Putin is playing chess while Obama is playing marbles.
Sarah Palin:
Look it, people are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates.
Rudolph Giuliani:
But he makes a decision and he executes it, quickly. Then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader.
If you think the comparison to Putin far fetched, here is Putin:
For the first time in the past 200–300 years, it (Russia) is facing the real threat of slipping down to the second, and possibly even third, rank of world states.
Now, compare with Trump’s slogan to make America great again.
Chicago’s Booth school surveys select Economics faculty (the IMG panel) on a variety of questions. Panelists are emailed a question and respond electronically, if so moved. They are asked to state whether they agree, strongly agree, disagree, are uncertain etc. as well as provide a level of confidence and, if they wish, some words of explanation. Here is one of the questions:
Using surge pricing to allocate transportation services — such as Uber does with its cars — raises consumer welfare through various potential channels, such as increasing the supply of those services, allocating them to people who desire them the most, and reducing search and queuing costs.
The correct answer to this question is: it depends. See below for the explanation. Back to the IMG panel. What is its purpose? According to the web site:
This panel explores the extent to which economists agree or disagree on major public policy issues. To assess such beliefs we assembled this panel of expert economists. Statistics teaches that a sample of (say) 40 opinions will be adequate to reflect a broader population if the sample is representative of that population.
Yes, but what is the underlying population? The IMG site does not say, instead it summarizes the cv’s of the sample:
The panel members are all senior faculty at the most elite research universities in the United States. The panel includes Nobel Laureates, John Bates Clark Medalists, fellows of the Econometric society, past Presidents of both the American Economics Association and American Finance Association, past Democratic and Republican members of the President’s Council of Economics, and past and current editors of the leading journals in the profession. This selection process has the advantage of not only providing a set of panelists whose names will be familiar to other economists and the media, but also delivers a group with impeccable qualifications to speak on public policy matters.
This is the high table of Economists, a group so select that the sample probably is the population. Why bother with the remarks about sampling?
How did the panelists respond to the surge pricing question? One strongly agreed with the statement but with a level of confidence of 1 (which I think is the lowest). This panelist also provided an explanation that makes clear that the reported confidence level was incorrect. Another, offers an `Agree’ with level of confidence of 3. Why not declare `uncertainty’? Or is the panelists trying to say: generally true but with some exceptions. The other responses suggest busy people trying to be helpful (recall Truman) on a task that is low priority for them.
Only one panelist provides an answer that can be interpreted as `it depends’. That panelist reports being uncertain with a level of confidence of 10. This panelist also provides an explanation:
`Consumer plus producer surplus should rise but in the absence of competition consumer surplus may not. With competition consumers will gain.’
Two make things concrete, consider a monopolist who faces two states of the world characterized by two demand curves: peak and off-peak, with off-peak state occurring most of the time. Now compare consumer surplus in two scenarios: same price in both states of the world, different price in each state. In which scenario will consumer surplus be higher? Which is a lovely intermediate micro question! In addition, if buyers are liquidity constrained, a price mechanism will not efficiently match rides to riders who value them the most.
I think the answer to the question posed reveals less about agreement on policy than the default assumption of the responder about the nature of the underlying market (passenger transportation).
Because I have white hair and that so sparse as to resemble the Soviet harvest of 1963, I am asked for advice. Just recently I was asked about `hot’ research topics in the sharing economy. `You mean a pure exchange economy?, said I in reply. Because I have white hair etc, I sometimes forget to bite my tongue.
Returning to topic, the Economist piece I linked to above, gets it about right. With a fall in certain transaction costs, trades that were otherwise infeasible, are realized. At a high level there is nothing more to be said beyond what we know already about exchange economies.
A closer looks suggests something of interest in the role of the mediator (eBay, Uber) responsible for the reduction in transaction costs. They are not indifferent Walrasian auctioneers but self interested ones. eBay and Uber provide an interesting contrast in `intrusiveness’. The first reduces the costs with respect to search, alleviates the lemons problem and moral hazard by providing information and managing payments. It does not, however, set prices. These are left to participants to decide. In sum, eBay it appears, tries to eliminate the textbook obstacles to a perfectly competitive market. Uber, also does these things but more. It chooses prices and the supplier who will meet the reported demand. One might think eBay does not because of the multitude of products it would have to track. The same is true for Uber. A product on Uber is a triple of origin, destination and time of day. The rider and driver may not be thinking about things in this way, but Uber certainly must in deciding prices and which supplier will be chosen to meet the demand. Why doesn’t Uber allow riders to post bids and drivers to post asks?
Lamar Smith’s new bill to ensure that NSF research advances the national interest does not go far enough. Smith who is Chairman of the House Science, Space and technology committee writes:
We must set funding priorities that ensure America remains first in the global marketplace of basic research and technological innovation, while preventing misuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars. Unfortunately, in the past NSF has funded too many questionable research grants – money that should have gone to projects in the national interest. For example, how does the federal government justify spending $220,000 to study animal photos in National Geographic? Or $50,000 to study lawsuits in Peru from 1600 – 1700? Federal research agencies have an obligation to explain to American taxpayers why their money is being used on such research instead of on more worthy projects.
To ensure that the NSF is not profligate, the bill requires that each grant award
“be accompanied by a non-technical explanation of the project’s scientific merits and how it serves the national interest.”
Why stop with the NSF? Public education consumes an even larger share of my tax dollars. Why must I support the good for nothing offspring of my neighbors who grow up to be actors, musicians and worse, number theorists? If they want their children to be artsy-fartsy pseudo intellectuals they should do it on their own dime. Would be parents should be required to submit, a grant proposal justifying their desire for children. Each successful award should be accompanied by an explanation of how their child will serve the national interest.
The Leisure of the Theory Class 
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