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Bailouts and the Preservation of Competition: The Case of the Federal Timber Contract Payment Modification Act

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  • James W. Roberts
  • Andrew Sweeting

Abstract

We estimate the value of competition in United States Forest Service (USFS) timber auctions, in the context of the Reagan administration's bailout of firms that faced substantial losses on existing contracts. We use a model with endogenous entry by asymmetric firms, allowing survivors to respond to the exit of bailed-out firms by entering more auctions and for these marginal entrants to have lower values than firms that would choose to enter in any event, a selective entry effect. Observed asymmetries and selective entry contribute to us finding that the bailout may have increased USFS revenues in subsequent auctions quite substantially.

Suggested Citation

  • James W. Roberts & Andrew Sweeting, 2016. "Bailouts and the Preservation of Competition: The Case of the Federal Timber Contract Payment Modification Act," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 257-288, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:8:y:2016:i:3:p:257-88
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.20150070
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Pasha Andreyanov & El Hadi Caoui, 2022. "Secret reserve prices by uninformed sellers," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(3), pages 1203-1256, July.
    2. Grundl, Serafin & Zhu, Yu, 2019. "Identification and estimation of risk aversion in first-price auctions with unobserved auction heterogeneity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 210(2), pages 363-378.
    3. Sabrina Peng, 2020. "Selective Entry in Highway Procurement Auctions," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 48(4), pages 519-533, December.
    4. Jayeeta Bhattacharya & Nathalie Gimenes & Emmanuel Guerre, 2019. "Semiparametric Quantile Models for Ascending Auctions with Asymmetric Bidders," Papers 1911.13063, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2020.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • H81 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Governmental Loans; Loan Guarantees; Credits; Grants; Bailouts
    • H82 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Governmental Property
    • L73 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Primary Products and Construction - - - Forest Products
    • Q23 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Forestry

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    1. Bailouts and the Preservation of Competition: The Case of the Federal Timber Contract Payment Modification Act (AEJ:MI 2016) in ReplicationWiki

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