This thesis is a case study examining Czech public procurement in medi- cal machinery industry. It proposes and applies several practical methods for identifying risk of bid rigging, such as: frequency analysis of participation of the same small groups of firms, analyzing ownership structure of participating firms and frequency analysis of systematically excluded bids of firms. Results include presence of cases of the same small groups of firms which bid more fre- quently together with no other competitors. Main contribution of the work lays in outlining some analytical possibilities for practical detection of bid rigging risk. JEL Classification H57, H75, K42 Keywords public procurement, bid rigging, Czech Repub- lic, medical machinery Author's e-mail janamar@atlas.cz Supervisor's e-mail jskuhrovec@gmail.com Abstrakt Tato práce je případovou studií zkoumající veřejné zakázky z oblasti me- dicínského vybavení. Práce navrhuje a aplikuje následující praktické metody pro odhalení rizika bid riggingu: frekvenční analýza účasti stejné malé skupiny firem, analýzu vlastnické strukury firem a frekvenční analýzu počtu vyřazených nabídek. Analýza odhalila případy skupin malých firem, které spolu často soutěží v omezené konkurenci. Hlavním přínosem práce je nastínění...

The thesis is focused on the issue of Apartment price heat maps. The aim is to approach the topic of apartment price heat maps, methodology for the creation of price heat maps and its specifics. Theoretical knowledge is applied to two selected parts of Prague - Zizkov and Vinohrady. The final data of both areas are summarised to two specific price heat maps. The end of the thesis compares the processed results with officially published data of the czech national institution ČSÚ.

This dissertation consists of 3 essays that examine the impact of electronic screen trading in futures markets. The research provides empirical evidence on increasingly significant issues given the rapid global advances in technology used in securities markets. Each essay addresses the scarcity of conclusive research in order to aid researchers, regulators, exchange policy makers and systems builders as they confront issues related to electronic trading systems.

In this paper, we develop a novel index structure to support efficient approximate k-nearest neighbor (KNN) query in high-dimensional databases. In high-dimensional spaces, the computational cost of the distance (e.g., Euclidean distance) between two points contributes a dominant portion of the overall query response time for memory processing. To reduce the distance computation, we first propose a structure (BID) using BIt-Difference to answer approximate KNN query. The BID employs one bit to represent each feature vector of point and the number of bit-difference is used to prune the further points. To facilitate real dataset which is typically skewed, we enhance the BID mechanism with clustering, cluster adapted bitcoder and dimensional weight, named the BID⁺. Extensive experiments are conducted to show that our proposed method yields significant performance advantages over the existing index structures on both real life and synthetic high-dimensional datasets. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Den här uppsatsen behandlar företag som är listade på Stockholmsbörsen som gjorde omvänd split mellan 1995 och 2004. Företagen är testade för abnormal avkastning kring tillkännagivandet av den omvända spliten, samt förändringar i köp-sälj ratio, handels volym och antalet handelsdagar där ingen handel skedde i aktien. Inga abnormala avkastningar eller signifikanta förändringar i köp-sälj ration eller handelsvolymen kunde hittas. Däremot så visar förändringen i antalet handelsdagar utan handel i aktien en försämring och antalet handelsdagar minskade i de aktier som genomgått en omvänd split. Detta medför att likviditeten minskade för de företag som genomförde en omvänd split. / This paper addresses reverse splits for firms trading on the Stockholm stock exchange between 1995 and 2004. The related sample are tested for abnormal returns surrounding the announcement day of the reverse split, as well as any changes in bid-ask spread, trading volume and the number of non-trading days. No findings of abnormal returns or significant changes in either bid-ask spread or trading volume could be found, while the number of non-trading days for the whole sample increased. This may suggest that the marketability decreased for the reverse splitting firms.

As one of the oldest and most innovative financial institutions, a clearinghouse efficiently clears and settles payments for equity transactions as well as other securities. However, this paper will only be concerned with common and preferred equity securities. The purpose of a clearinghouse is to reduce counterparty risk. It acts as an intermediary between two parties, so that the risk of one party failing to honor its contractual obligation is diminished. It reduces settlement risk through netting, the process of eliminating offsetting transactions, thus decreasing the amount of cash flow. I examine the impact of the New York Stock Exchange Clearinghouse upon its establishment in May 1892. Specifically, I analyze the clearinghouse’s effect on trading costs for different equity securities, scrutinizing the effects on bid-ask spreads. I find that once a firm joined the NYSE clearinghouse, both its relative and absolute bid-ask spreads are narrowed, representing an overall reduction in spreads of 5.28 percent.

This thesis studies the impact of sequential auction design on participant behavior from both a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint. In the first of the two analyses, three sequential auction designs are characterized and compared based on expected profitability to the participants. The optimal bid strategy is derived as well. One of the designs, the alternating design, is a new auction design and is a blend of the other two. It assumes that the ability to bid in or initiate an auction is given to each side of the market in an alternating fashion to simulate seasonal markets. The conditions for an equilibrium auction design are derived and characteristics of the equilibrium are outlined. The primary result is that the alternating auction is a viable compromise auction design when buyers and suppliers disagree on whether to hold a sequence of forward or reverse auctions. We also found the value of information on future private value for a strategic supplier in a two-period case of the alternating and reverse auction designs. The empirical work studies the cause of low aggregation of timber supply in reverse auctions of an online timber exchange. Unlike previous research results regarding timber auctions, which focus on offline public auctions held by the U.S. Forest Service, we study online private auctions between logging companies and mills. A limited survey of the online auction data revealed that the auctions were successful less than 50% of the time. Regression analysis is used to determine which internal and external factors to the auction affect the aggregation of timber in an effort to determine the reason that so few auctions succeeded. The analysis revealed that the number of bidders, the description of the good and the volume demanded had a significant influence on the amount of timber supplied through the online auction exchange. A plausible explanation for the low aggregation is that the exchange was better suited to check the availability for custom cuts of timber and to transact standard timber.

Turkish Electricity Market is modeled as a non-cooperative game with complete information in order to simulate the behavior of market participants and analyze their possible strategies. Player strategies are represented with multipliers in a discrete strategy set. Different market scenarios are tested through different game settings. As the novelty of this thesis, similar market participants are clustered and treated as single players in order to apply game theory in an efficient way. Generators are clustered using Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering and Square Sum of Deviations is used as the proximity measure. The game is constructed with three players that reflect the main characteristics of the market participants. Clusters and game scenarios are constructed using the real market data of the Turkish Electricity Market at four different time points in 2008 and results are compared. Clustering results reflect the actual installed capacity distribution based on the main companies and fuel types in Turkish Electricity Market. According to four games of clustered electricity generators, when there is not enough competition in the market, dominant player is advised to submit bids with lower price for energy surplus cases and offers with higher price for energy deficit cases. However, when there is competition in the market, players are advised to submit offers with lower price in order to take a share of the limited demand for up-regulation.

In this study, we address the long-term project pricing problem for a company that operates in the defense industry. The pricing problem is a bid project pricing problem which includes various technical and financial uncertainties, such as estimations of workhour content of the project and exchange &amp / inflation rates. We propose a Robust Optimization (RO) approach that can deal with the uncertainties during the project lifecycle through the identification of several discrete scenarios. The bid project&rsquo / s performance measures, other than the monetary measures, for R&amp / D projects are identified and the problem is formulated as a multi-attribute utility project pricing problem. In our RO approach, the bid pricing problem is decomposed into two parts which are v solved sequentially: the Penalty-Model, and the RO model. In the Penalty-Model, penalty costs for the possible violations in the company&rsquo / s workforce level due to the bid project&rsquo / s workhour requirements are determined. Then the RO model searches for the optimum bid price by considering the penalty cost from the Penalty-Model, the bid project&rsquo / s performance measures, the probability of winning the bid for a given bid price and the deviations in the bid project&rsquo / s cost. Especially for the R&amp / D type projects, the model tends to place lower bid prices in the expected value solutions in order to win the bid. Thus, due to the possible deviations in the project cost, R&amp / D projects have a high probability of suffering from a financial loss in the expected value solutions. However, the robust solutions provide results which are more aware of the deviations in the bid project&rsquo / s cost and thus eliminate the financial risks by making a tradeoff between the bid project&rsquo / s benefits, probability of winning the bid and the financial loss risk. Results for the probability of winning in the robust solutions are observed to be lower than the expected value solutions, whereas expected value solutions have higher probabilities of suffering from a financial loss.

The English online auction creates great business opportunities. However, it¡¦s different from traditional English auction in long bidding time, wide area, high risk, massive information, and low switching cost. It makes bidders easy to search information of the goods but difficult to win the auction. The bidders' transaction cost structure has changed from information phase to agreement phase. So, the bidders need more precise supporting tools to help them make decisions. The aim of this research is to investigate two-person optimal bidding strategies under three dimensions of the decision space: the sequence decision (bid firstly or later), the bid decision (bid or quit), and the jump decision (minimum increase or jump bid). It is assumed that there are two bidders competing in one auction. Variables associated with the auction system include the floor price and the minimum increase. Variables associated with the bidders include the private value of the bidding object, and the cost of bid per turn. Strategies were evaluated based on the following criteria: who wins, how many turns to win the bid, the deal price, the utility of the winner and the loser, the probability of winning, and the expected utility. The results indicate that every strategy has its advantages and disadvantages under certain conditions. This research provides guiding rules for the bidders to choose a better strategy.