In the construction industry, the winner’s curse occurs when the winning contractor has underestimated the project’s true cost. Using a game and auction theory approach, this study aims to analyze - and potentially reduce - industry exposure to the effects of the winner's curse in construction bidding. A simulation model for single and multi-stage bidding processes was developed and analyzed an actual dataset of California Department of Transportation projects. The majority of general contractors and sub-contractors suffer from the winner's curse in both single and multi-stage bidding environments. The multi-stage bidding environment incurs more losses than the single-stage bidding environment. Through learning from past experiences though, the multi-stage bidding environment provides contractors with better opportunity to avoid the winner's curse. Finally, it was shown that the symmetric risk neutral Nash equilibrium optimal bid function provides the contractors with a tool to avoid the winner's curse and gain strategic positive profits.

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Railways have played an important role for the Swedish economy throughout the 20th into the 21st century since it provides good connections between urban and rural regions and also within them. However, it has been very costly for the state to run this activity and a significant effort to reduce costs and to increase the efficiency for this sector was to introduce procurement auctions where also private firms are invited to lay bids. Four auctions have taken place in Jönköpings Län since its introduction in 1990. It has been a turbulent time economically for the winning bidders and the phenomena winner’s curse is evident where the bidder with highest over-estimate wins and therefore faces high costs or low returns. This study points at flaws in the auction design as the reason for the economical difficulties for the winning firms. If second-price sealed bid auctions or first-price sealed bid auctions were used instead of a combination of first-price sealed auction and English auction, the winner’s curse phenomena could be reduced or even eliminated.

In this paper, we examine data on U.S. GDP/Capita and natural resource share of GDP by state. We then run growth regressions and build on a previous model of dynamic equations to account for the spatial equilibrium that exists between U.S. states. Our results show that there exists evidence that overinvestment in oil and mining sectors has negative effects on state TFP growth, thus giving positive evidence for the existence of a natural resource curse between U.S. states.

<p>Railways have played an important role for the Swedish economy throughout the 20th into the 21st century since it provides good connections between urban and rural regions and also within them. However, it has been very costly for the state to run this activity and a significant effort to reduce costs and to increase the efficiency for this sector was to introduce procurement auctions where also private firms are invited to lay bids.</p><p>Four auctions have taken place in Jönköpings Län since its introduction in 1990. It has been a turbulent time economically for the winning bidders and the phenomena winner’s curse is evident where the bidder with highest over-estimate wins and therefore faces high costs or low returns.</p><p>This study points at flaws in the auction design as the reason for the economical difficulties for the winning firms. If second-price sealed bid auctions or first-price sealed bid auctions were used instead of a combination of first-price sealed auction and English auction, the winner’s curse phenomena could be reduced or even eliminated.</p>

Curse Keepers is the first half of a novel that chronicles the story of a secret organization determined to keep the Chicago Cubs from winning the World Series and, thereby, forestalling the end of the world.

The Olympic Games have become one of the world’s largest and most popular sporting events. With its massive scale, the costs that come with hosting the Games are elevating to unprecedented levels, leaving host cities with massive financial debt. So why do cities continue to bid for the rights to host the Games? In this paper I will attempt to answer this question by providing an overview of the bidding process and the economic impact of the Games and I will argue that the costs of hosting the Olympics are often underestimated while the benefits are greatly overestimated. I will then provide an alternative direction for the Olympic movement.

Despite rational thinking suggesting that a country rich in resources should have higher socioeconomic growth and development,the results of many resource rich countries have not been encouraging. This phenomenon has been studied widely and has been termed the resource curse and denotes how a country with abundant natural resources tends to have lower economic growth and generally display poorer development levels than countries with fewer natural resources. The Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) has been proposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a tool to curb the resource curse and many resource rich countries have recently started SWFs. The recent activity of SWFs has sparked a lot of interest in this topic but most of the studies conducted to date have failed to determine the effect of the SWF on a country’s socioeconomic development and on its ability to mitigate the resource curse. This research is unique in that it establishes the impact of the creation of a SWF on the socioeconomic performance of resource rich countries by examining the Human Development Index of these countries. In addition,the research examines the key success factors of a SWF and establishes a framework that can be used to ensure that the SWF is effective. The study has found that the establishment of a SWF is not a guarantee of success and that governance is the most significant success factor in a SWFs effectiveness. As a result, the SWF is proposed as one solution to the resource curse and a SWF framework is presented with governance as a key success factor. This research is particularly relevant to the resource dependent economies of Africa that have lagged the rest of the world in many socioeconomic measures such as the Human Development Index and income inequality. The effective deployment of a SWF is one option that these economies can utilise to!ensure that their resource riches are translated into socioeconomic development. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / zkgibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

The resource curse thesis states that countries with an abundance of natural resources tend to experience lower economic growth rates. However, does this theory apply also to the regional level? The purpose of this thesis is to both test the natural resources curse theory at the regional level in Sweden, as well to examine if different types of natural resource dependencies appear to have the same effect on regional income growth in the country. The methodological approach builds on an econometric (OLS) analysis using two different panel datasets over time intervals, 2000-2017 and 2007-2017, respectively. The results from one of the datasets suggest that the dependency on natural resources does not appear to affect Swedish counties' income growth, nor is there any difference in the impact on income growth from different types of natural resources. However, the corresponding results from the other dataset suggest a positive relationship, although these results are not robust across various model specifications. / Teorin om naturresursernas förbannelse förutspår att länder med ett överflöd av naturresurser kommer att ha en lägre ekonomisk tillväxt. Stämmer även denna teori på regional nivå? Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om resursförbannelsen existerar på regional nivå i Sverige samt att undersöka om olika typer av naturresurser har olika påverkan på den regionala inkomstutvecklingen i landet. Metodiken för att besvara detta bygger på en ekonometrisk (OLS) analys med två olika paneldataset med skilda tidsintervaller, 2000–2017 och 2007–2017. De resultat som baseras på det ena datasetet visar att naturresurser inte har en påverkan på inkomstutvecklingen på svensk länsnivå, samt att olika typer av naturresurser inte heller har en påverkan på den regionala inkomstutvecklingen. Det andra datasetet påvisar dock att det finns ett positivt förhållande mellan regional inkomstutveckling och naturresurser, men detta resultat är inte robust.

Thesis advisor: Richard, S.J. McGowan / The Natural Resource Curse literature proposes to explain why and to what extent resource-wealthy countries have poor economic growth outcomes. Most research focuses on direct economic explanations, considering the role of governing institutions exogenously if at all. One emerging branch of explanations attempts to address this shortcoming, focusing on the indirect effects of institutional deterioration on economic outcomes in resource-rich countries. I add to this emerging literature by performing an econometric analysis of 16 oil-producing nations, examining the impact of national oil rent dependency on 12 dimensions of government quality from 1987-2008. I find that oil dependency has a significant negative impact on government quality in 11 of the 12 dimensions. I also find that controlling for preexisting levels of democracy does not significantly mitigate institutional resource curse effects. This runs counter to findings about economic effects, which tend to disappear when democracy levels are high. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.