This dissertation provides a thorough analysis of the costs associated with, and efficacy of, sequential license buyback auctions. I use data from the Texas Shrimp License Buyback Program - a sequential license buyback auction - to estimate the effects of a repeated game set-up on bidding behavior. I develop a dynamic econometric model to estimate parameters of the fisherman's optimal bidding function in this auction. The model incorporates the learning that occurs when an agent is able to submit bids for the same asset in multiple rounds and is capable of distinguishing between the fisherman's underlying valuation of the license and the speculative premium induced by the sequential auction. I show that bidders in the sequential auction do in fact inflate bids above their true license valuation in response to the sequential auction format. The results from our econometric model are used to simulate a hypothetical buyback program for capacity reduction in the offshore shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Mexico using two competing auction formats: the sequential auction and the one-time auction. I use this simulation analysis to compare the cost and effectiveness of sequential license buyback program relative to one-time license buyback programs. I find that one-time auctions, although they impose a greater up-front cost on the management agency - are capable of retiring more fishing effort per dollar spent then sequential license buyback programs. In particular, I find one-time license buyback auctions to be more cost effective than sequential ones because they remove the possibility for fishermen to learn about the agency's willingness to pay function and use this information to extract sale prices in excess of the true license value.

The advancement of computer technology is playing an important role in almost all fields in the construction industry in the current era. It has become a tool for exchanging legal contract information, including bid data. In the traditional closed bidding system, the bidders were unaware of their competitors' bid quotes and had no opportunity available to make a counter an offer to the bid at a different level. However, in reverse auction bidding (RAB), contractors can track their competitors' bids and take the given opportunity to re-bid the projects at lower rates. Unlike traditional auctions, where buyers raise their purchasing prices to outbid competitors, reverse auctions permit buyers to purchase goods and services from suppliers who are encouraged to sell them at the lowest price. The benefit of the reverse auction bidding is either that the vendors are able to re-bid, or lower their bid multiple times. This is an example of transparent economic information. Van Vleet initiated the ongoing Reverse Auction Bidding study at Texas A&M University. Van Vleet had created a Microsoft Access database system and ASP web based user interface for RAB study. The methodology developed by van Vleet is still being used today, and this study has been extended into analyzing different personality types and the impact on the bidding system. In the previous studies conducted by different researchers in TAMU, the performance of participants in the RAB process along with their behavior are being observed with respect to their personality. Personality of each player is tested using the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) test. The previous study states that there appears to be a strong correlation between personality type and game performance. The first case study conducted by van Vleet involved five participants who had no prior experience in Reverse Auction Bidding. The number of participants has varied from three to ten participants. This research has been conducted on graduate students of the Construction Science Department of TAMU who have no prior experience in RAB. In continuation with the previous studies held in TAMU, the results show that there is an observable pattern in the bidding strategy of first time bidders while taking part in Reverse Auction Bidding.

The thesis aims to examine Customer Management Relationship strategies used by different auction websites. The thesis used content analysis to investigate different auction websites with 32 website interactive functions, which can be classified into 8 categories. The research results found that auction websites had good performance in three categories of interactive functions(the website interactive interfacing, information offering, and individual options). It should be noted that two leading auction websites, namely Yahoo! and eBay, perform better than others in interactive interfacing. Roodo! is ranked the third and itemBay for cyber asset transactions the fourth. The result suggested that the auction websites should enhance sitemap navigating features, upgrade the webpage update rate, offer customer support activities, on-line surveys, routine raffle-drawing events, consolidate a customer-based community, and appealing on-line interactive games.

The Poincare equations, also known as Lagrange's equations in quasi coordinates, are revisited with special attention focused on a diagonal form. The diagonal form stems from a special choice of quasi velocities that were first introduced by Georg Hamel nearly a century ago. The form has been largely ignored because the quasi velocities create so-called Hamel coefficients that appear in the governing equations and are based on the partial derivative of the mass matrix factorization. Consequently, closed-form expressions for the Hamel coefficients can be difficult to obtain and relying on finite-dimensional, numerical methods are unattractive. In this thesis we use a newly developed operator overloading technique to automatically generate the Hamel coefficients through exact partial differentiation together with numerical evaluation. The equations can then be numerically integrated for system simulation. These special Poincare equations are called the Hamel Form and their usefulness in dynamic modeling and control is investigated. Coordinated control algorithms for an automatic retargeting system are developed in an attempt to protect an area against direct assaults. The scenario is for a few weapon systems to suddenly be faced with many hostile targets appearing together. The weapon systems must decide which weapon system will attack which target and in whatever order deemed sufficient to defend the protected area. This must be performed in a real-time environment, where every second is crucial. Four different control methods in this thesis are developed. They are tested against each other in computer simulations to determine the survivability and thought process of the control algorithms. An auction based control algorithm finding targets of opportunity achieved the best results.

Following the rapid development of the electronic commercial (EC) market, the circumstance of purchasing products and services on the Internet in Taiwan with substantially growing trend has become more mature. According to a marketing research report, it is expected that more retailers and consumers will enter the online-auction market in 2007. In the aspect of consumer behavior, the habits of consumers searching and purchasing products are gradually going to be shaped up, and a flood of individual sellers are joining into the competition at the online-auction seeking the opportunity for selling their products. In the past researches, it is found that the study focused on online auction sellers is limited. This research tries to combine FCB Grid and four features to build a website to preliminarily analyze and explore how the professional retailers present the product pages in Yahoo!Kimo online auction interface for the purpose of examining whether there are different product performing ways from other EC websites. In addition, we also discuss about whether there is any discrepancy over product performance and ERP due to products¡¦ characteristics. The research takes the advantage of using content analysis method and drawing 392 samples totally from 18 categories in Yahoo!Kimo online auction platform for study. All samples¡¦ accumulated scores have to over 1000 and rank the top 25 in each category. In each sample, 4 web pages including virtual storefront, about sellers, product, and evaluation have to be drawn to the accumulation. In total, there are 392 selected samples covering 18 categories. As a result of this research, we find that the highly emotional involving products have the highest accumulated positive/negative evaluation scores on an average. However, there¡¦s no difference while facing trading problems revealed in the negative evaluation. Theses sellers put more emphasis on rational appeals such as relating truth, solving problems, and using recommendations by consumers. Some also use emotional appeals which tend to create an overall image of the storefront. In addition, the sellers of highly emotional involving products are more than happy to mention the ego gratification and social acceptance. On the other hand, appeals which were often exercised in traditional media advertisement seldom appear in online auction website. Compared with other researches, the auction sellers apply huge amount of product information. The categories of information are affected by the online auction platform. From the websites of professional sellers, four concrete features are also concluded. First, sellers use pictures to develop the value of products. Second, the well-known brand awareness of a product is not the main factor to be successful in online auction platform, instead creating sellers¡¦ own brand images. Third, sellers provide sufficient social clues, but seldom refer to the rights of protecting consumers¡¦ private information. Fourth, affected by the Internet, they make good use of sales promotion such as e-paper, discount, and product warrant. Finally, the research also describes four kinds of product webpage features and makes a concrete recommendation concerning building product web pages for sellers who want to contribute to long term business in online auction.

If the market of military procurement conforms to the double auction (Chatterjee and Samuelson, 1983), the government and the manufacturer can try to reach a binding agreement and maximize the monopoly profit. When they both comply with the agreement, the game constitutes a cooperative game. The government and the firm can extend the periods of the game from one to two through signing the research and development contract. When they carry out the research and development contract in the second phase, the trading probability in the first phase that is double auction model will rise. However the R&D contract causes an increase of transaction probability, the market offers an opportunity let the ineligible manufacturer participate in the defense procurement. We can find the trade-off relationship between the advancement of trading probability and the appearances of unqualified firm. The result is consistent with Inefficiency theorem that an incentive-compatible mechanism which is ex post efficient will not be individual theorem.

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This dissertation consists of three essays in Economic Theory. The rst essay proposes and studies a new solution concept for games with incomplete information. In game theory, there is a basic methodological dichotomy between Harsanyi's \game-theoretic" view and Aumann's \Bayesian decision-theoretic" view of the world. We follow the game theoretic view, propose and study interim partially correlated rationalizability for games with incomplete information. We argue that the distinction between this solution concept and the interim correlated rationalizability studied by Dekel, Fudenberg and Morris (2007) is fundamental, in that the latter implicitly follows Aumann's Bayesian view. Our main result shows that two types provide the same prediction in interim partially correlated rationalizability if and only if they have the same in nite hierarchy of beliefs over conditional beliefs. We also establish an equivalence result between this solution concept and the Bayesian solution{a notion of correlated equilibrium proposed by Forges (1993). The second essay studies the relationship between correlated equilibrium the redundancy embedded in type spaces. The Bayesian solution is a notion of correlated equilibrium proposed by Forges (1993), and hierarchies of beliefs over conditional beliefs are introduced by Ely and Peski (2006) in their study of interim rationalizability. We study the connection between the two concepts. We say that two type spaces are equivalent if they represent the same set of hierarchies of beliefs over conditional beliefs. We show that the correlation embedded in equivalent type spaces can be characterized by partially correlating devices, which send correlated signals to players in a belief invariant way. Since such correlating devices also implement the Bayesian solution, we establish that the Bayesian solution is invariant across equivalent type spaces. The third essay studies the existence of equilibria for rst-price sealed bid auctions when bidders form a network and each bidder observes perfectly their neighbors' private valuations. Asymmetry in bidders' positions in the network creates asymmetry in bidders' knowledge. We show the existence of pure-strategy equilibrium. / text

The use of functional foods by individuals to address health issues has become increasingly common. Pomegranate fruits and other pomegranate products contain phytochemicals, including several antioxidants that may have benefits when consumed as a functional food. The production of pomegranates in the United States is concentrated in California; yet pomegranates can be grown successfully in other regions. The purpose of this study was two-fold: 1) to address the market potential and consumer preferences for pomegranate fruits and other pomegranate products in Texas and 2) to address issues of experimental auction design and estimation in regards to novel products and health benefits of food products. A nonhypothetical experimental procedure was developed that combined preference rankings with a uniform nth-price auction to elicit preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for pomegranate fruit products. Demographic and behavioral characteristics were collected from a representative sample of subjects in the Bryan-College Station area of Texas. Subjects submitted baseline preference rankings and bids on six pomegranate products and a control fruit product, all with the same retail price. Most participants had never purchased or tasted a pomegranate product. Additional information on the pomegranate products was provided in three forms: tasting information, health and nutrition information, and anti-cancer information. Subjects had the greatest WTP for the control product, followed by the juice product, followed by the ready-to-eat products; the whole pomegranate fruits had the lowest WTP. The preference rankings indicated the same order of preferences for the baseline round, but the ranking of the juice product dropped and the ranking of the ready-to-eat and Texas whole fruits rose when additional information was provided. Estimations of the WTP were done using random-effects tobit models and mixed linear models on the full bids and individual changes in bids. Unengaged bidders and bid censoring were addressed. Demographic variables were typically not predictors of WTP with the exception of previous purchases of pomegranates and household size. There were differences in WTP across information treatments, with tasting information having a greater effect than either health and nutrition information or anti-cancer information. Providing a reference price also increased WTP. Preference rankings were estimated using a rank-ordered logit and a mixed rank-ordered logit model. There was an interaction effect of each information treatment with the product characteristics, indicating that studies of effects of information treatments on preferences are not generalizable across products. There was divergence in the results for the preference rankings from the results of the experimental auction; preference rankings and bids gave different results for the same products.

Reverse Auction Bidding (RAB) is a recently developed procurement method that can be used by the construction industry. The technique is different from a traditional auction system, since RAB system uses a bidding activity method that is completed anonymously by pre-qualified bidders during a fixed auction time. The basic premise for the auction is that the current best auction price is available for viewing during the whole auction process by both bidders and owner. The apparent incentive is for noncompetitive bidders to lower the price. There are however controlling factor beyond the reach of owners, such as market demand, lending restrictions, stakeholder expectations and risk tolerance levels, that impact on price levels. However, owners continue to attempt to drive down prices using this technique. A study into the mechanics of RAB was launched at Texas A&M University in 2004. This ongoing study of RAB continues to this time with eighteen case studies. This nineteenth study looks at the time series bid data from some of the prior work. Nine case studies were selected from the previous case studies. These nine studies provided untainted data with 6674 RAB bid arrivals by prior investigator actions. This study concerns the statistical process of bid arrivals with time. The hypothesis to be tested is that the RAB bid arrivals timing can be modeled with a statistical process. The analysis reviewed the fit for several types of distribution, including Gaussian and Poissionian. The best fit was modeled by non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP). The first conclusion from the analysis is that RAB bid arrivals follows a Poisson process, termed non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP). The second conclusion is that the controlling Poissionian process has a square root factor. The NHPP model for RAB provides a tool for future studies of RAB in real time. Future work is suggested on the inter-time periods for the bidding.