IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedawp/95-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Collusion in uniform-price auctions: experimental evidence and implications for Treasury auctions

Author

Listed:
  • Gautam Goswami
  • Thomas H. Noe
  • Michael J. Rebello

Abstract

In uniform-price auctions of shares there exist collusive equilibria in which bidders capture the entire surplus from the auction as well as competitive equilibria in which the auctioneer captures the entire surplus from the auction. We provide experimental evidence that, in uniform-price auctions, non-binding pre-play communication facilitates convergence to collusive equilibrium outcomes. On the other hand, regardless of the opportunities for communication, in discriminatory-auction experiments subject strategies conform closely with the unique equilibrium in undominated strategies in which bidders' gains are equal to the smallest \"tick size\" in the bidding schedule. This evidence suggests that uniform-price auctions of Treasury securities may result in lower revenues than the currently employed discriminatory procedure.

Suggested Citation

  • Gautam Goswami & Thomas H. Noe & Michael J. Rebello, 1995. "Collusion in uniform-price auctions: experimental evidence and implications for Treasury auctions," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 95-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedawp:95-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.atlantafed.org/-/media/documents/research/publications/wp/1995/wp955.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harrison, Glenn W, 1989. "Theory and Misbehavior of First-Price Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 749-762, September.
    2. Bernheim, B. Douglas & Peleg, Bezalel & Whinston, Michael D., 1987. "Coalition-Proof Nash Equilibria I. Concepts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-12, June.
    3. Drew Fudenberg & Eric Maskin, 2008. "The Folk Theorem In Repeated Games With Discounting Or With Incomplete Information," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Drew Fudenberg & David K Levine (ed.), A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 11, pages 209-230, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Robert Wilson, 1979. "Auctions of Shares," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(4), pages 675-689.
    5. Samuelson, Larry, 1991. "Limit evolutionarily stable strategies in two-player, normal form games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 110-128, February.
    6. Back, Kerry & Zender, Jaime F, 1993. "Auctions of Divisible Goods: On the Rationale for the Treasury Experiment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(4), pages 733-764.
    7. Young, H Peyton, 1993. "The Evolution of Conventions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(1), pages 57-84, January.
    8. Cox, James C & Smith, Vernon L & Walker, James M, 1984. "Theory and Behavior of Multiple Unit Discriminative Auctions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(4), pages 983-1010, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. LiCalzi, Marco & Pavan, Alessandro, 2005. "Tilting the supply schedule to enhance competition in uniform-price auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 227-250, January.
    2. de Frutos, María-Ángeles & Fabra, Natalia, 2012. "How to allocate forward contracts: The case of electricity markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 451-469.
    3. Daripa, Arupratan, 2001. "A theory of treasury auctions," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 743-767, November.
    4. Orly Sade & Charles Schnitzlein & Jaime F. Zender, 2004. "Competition and Cooperation in Divisible Good Auctions: An Experimental Examination," Working Papers 2004.15, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    5. Marco Pagnozzi, 2007. "Should Speculators Be Welcomed in Auctions?," CSEF Working Papers 176, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    6. Zhang, Ning, 2009. "Market performance and bidders' bidding behavior in the New York Transmission Congestion Contract market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 61-68, January.
    7. van Damme, E.E.C., 1995. "Game theory : The next stage," Other publications TiSEM 7779b0f9-bef5-45c7-ae6b-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Manzano, Carolina & Vives, Xavier, 2021. "Market power and welfare in asymmetric divisible good auctions," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(3), July.
    9. Haoran He & Yefeng Chen, 2021. "Auction mechanisms for allocating subsidies for carbon emissions reduction: an experimental investigation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(2), pages 387-430, August.
    10. Matti Keloharju & Kjell G. Nyborg & Kristian Rydqvist, 2003. "Strategic Behavior and Underpricing in Uniform Price Auctions," Working Papers 2003.25, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    11. repec:awi:wpaper:0460 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Dirk Engelmann & Veronika Grimm, 2009. "Bidding Behaviour in Multi-Unit Auctions - An Experimental Investigation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(537), pages 855-882, April.
    13. Bennouri, Moez & Gimpel, Henner & Robert, Jacques, 2011. "Measuring the impact of information aggregation mechanisms: An experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 78(3), pages 302-318, May.
    14. Liu, Yun & Tan, Bowen, 2021. "Consignment auctions revisited," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    15. Lawrence M. Ausubel & Peter Cramton & Marek Pycia & Marzena Rostek & Marek Weretka, 2014. "Demand Reduction and Inefficiency in Multi-Unit Auctions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(4), pages 1366-1400.
    16. García, Julián & van Veelen, Matthijs, 2016. "In and out of equilibrium I: Evolution of strategies in repeated games with discounting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 161-189.
    17. Di Xiao & Andreas Krause, 2022. "Bank demand for central bank liquidity and its impact on interbank markets," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 17(3), pages 639-679, July.
    18. Cumpston, Anne & Khezr, Peyman, 2020. "Multi-Unit Auctions: A Survey of Theoretical Literature," MPRA Paper 101336, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Michał Krawczyk, 2009. "Demand functions in Polish Treasury auctions," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 40(4), pages 31-49.
    20. Keunkwan Ryu & Gyung-Rok Kim & Seonghwan Oh, 2004. "Discriminatory vs Uniform Price Auction: Auction Revenue," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 539, Econometric Society.
    21. Schnitzlein, Charles R. & Shao, Minjie, 2013. "Capacity constraints and the winner's curse in multi-unit common value auctions," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 188-201.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Government securities; Treasury bills;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedawp:95-5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Rob Sarwark (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbatus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.