We study the effects of the recent economic crisis on firms' bidding behavior and markups in sealed bid auctions. Using data from Austrian construction procurements, we estimate bidders' construction costs within a private value auction model. We find that markups of all bids submitted decrease by 1.5 percentage points in the recent economic crisis, markups of winning bids decrease by 3.3 percentage points. We also find that without the government stimulus package this decrease would have been larger. These two pieces of evidence point to pro-cyclical markups. (authors' abstract)

This dissertation develops Bayesian methods to analyze data from auctions and produce policy recommendations for auction design. The essay, "Auction Design Using Bayesian Methods," proposes a decision theoretic method to choose a reserve price in an auction using data from past auctions. Our method formally incorporates parameter uncertainty and the payoff structure into the decision procedure. When the sample size is modest, it produces higher expected revenue than the plug-in methods. Monte Carlo evidence for this is provided. The second essay, "Flexible Bayesian Analysis of First Price Auctions Using Simulated Likelihood," develops an empirical framework that fully exploits all the shape restrictions arising from economic theory: bidding monotonicity and density affiliation. We directly model the valuation density so that bidding monotonicity is automatically satisfied, and restrict the parameter space to rule out all the nonaffiliated densities. Our method uses a simulated likelihood to allow for a very exible specification, but the posterior analysis is exact for the chosen likelihood. Our method controls the smoothness and tail behavior of the valuation density and provides a decision theoretic framework for auction design. We reanalyze a dataset of auctions for drilling rights in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been widely used in past studies. Our approach gives significantly different policy prescriptions on the choice of reserve price than previous methods, suggesting the importance of the theoretical shape restrictions. Lastly, in the essay, "Simple Approximation Methods for Bayesian Auction Design," we propose simple approximation methods for Bayesian decision making in auction design problems. Asymptotic posterior distributions replace the true posteriors in the Bayesian decision framework, which are typically a Gaussian model (second price auction) or a shifted exponential model (first price auction). Our method first approximates the posterior payoff using the limiting models and then maximizes the approximate posterior payoff. Both the approximate and exact Bayes rules converge to the true revenue maximizing reserve price under certain conditions. Monte Carlo studies show that my method closely approximates the exact procedure even for fairly small samples.

La question de la biodiversité apparue au premier plan des préoccupations environnementales au même titre que le changement climatique a fait l'objet au niveau mondial d'une volumineuse littérature et de nombreux rapports alarmistes. Selon que l'on regarde la question du point de vue des sciences de la vie ou des sciences sociales on dispose de vues complémentaires mais aussi contradictoires. On envisage la question de la biodiversité en particulier méditerranéenne sous l'angle de sa gestion territoriale axée sur l'étude comparative de plusieurs cas localisés au sein d'espaces marqués par d'intenses interactions hommes-milieux où la prise en compte de cet enjeu est questionnée dans un contexte décisionnel conflictuel. Cette thèse porte sur le management territorial et sur l'approche de la biodiversité qui ressort des pratiques en rapport de l'état de la biodiversité, des phénomènes qui la menacent. On confronte ce savoir avec les pratiques managériales quand celles-ci sont contraintes par des événements conflictuels révélant les valeurs de multiples parties prenantes. On en déduit trois modèles de relations « Homme-Nature » et les implications de régulation qui en découlent et on fait ressortir les paradoxes des politiques publiques orientées sur la biodiversité. On montre alors le caractère déterminant de ces modèles, explicites et implicites, mobilisés par les décideurs aux niveaux individuel et institutionnel. On apporte ainsi un éclairage à la faiblesse de l'institutionnalisation de l'enjeu de la biodiversité, balbutiante. Ceci nous amène à fournir des recommandations pour une intégration de cet enjeu dans les pratiques managériales tant publiques que privées / The issue of biodiversity has been at the forefront of environmental concerns in the same way as climate change, and has been the subject of a voluminous literature and numerous alarmist reports worldwide. Depending on whether one looks at the question from the point of view of the life sciences or the social sciences one has complementary but also contradictory views. The issue of biodiversity, particularly in the Mediterranean, is considered from the angle of its territorial management, which focuses on the comparative study of several localized cases in areas marked by intense interactions between men and the environment, where the consideration for this issue is questioned in a conflictual decision-making context. This thesis deals with territorial management and the approach to biodiversity that emerges from practices related to the state of biodiversity, the phenomena that threaten it. This knowledge is confronted with managerial practices when they are constrained by conflicting events revealing the values of multiple stakeholders. We deduce three models of « Man-Nature » relationships and the regulatory implications that arise from them, and we highlight the paradoxes of public policies oriented towards biodiversity. We then show the determinative nature of these explicit and implicit models, mobilized by decision makers at the individual and institutional levels. This brings to light the weakness of the institutionalization of the issue of biodiversity, stammering. This leads us to provide recommendations for the integration of this issue into managerial practices, both public and private

This is a cross-national qualitative study with the purpose of obtaining perspectives held by people with quadriplegia and leading figures in disability movements in the Netherlands and Australia on the issues of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (EPAS). A disability voice is not prominent in public debate on EPAS in Australia or the Netherlands, even though people with disabilities are often thought to be vulnerable in relation to EPAS policies. Disability perspectives are potentially valuable in illuminating issues in relation to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, because issues of dependence, independence, and individual autonomy play important roles in relation to both EPAS and to living with disability. The study's methodology uses a phenomenological approach and incorporates aspects of heuristics and grounded theory. Its conceptual framework incorporates MacIntyre's (1999) theory of acknowledged dependency and vulnerability; Habermas' (1989) theory of knowledge; and Festinger's (1959) theory of cognitive dissonance. The main sample of twenty people with quadriplegia (the grassroots sample) was interviewed in the Netherlands and in Australia.

The aim of this thesis is to develop efficient and practically useful Bayesian methods for statistical inference in structural second-price auctions. The models are applied to a carefully collected coin auction dataset with bids and auction-specific characteristics from one thousand Internet auctions on eBay. Bidders are assumed to be risk-neutral and symmetric, and compete for a single object using the same game-theoretic strategy. A key contribution in the thesis is the derivation of very accurate approximations of the otherwise intractable equilibrium bid functions under different model assumptions. These easily computed and numerically stable approximations are shown to be crucial for statistical inference, where the inverse bid functions typically needs to be evaluated several million times. In the first paper, the approximate bid is a linear function of a bidder's signal and a Gaussian common value model is estimated. We find that the publicly available book value and the condition of the auctioned object are important determinants of bidders' valuations, while eBay's detailed seller information is essentially ignored by the bidders. In the second paper, the Gaussian model in the first paper is contrasted to a Gamma model that allows intrinsically non-negative common values. The Gaussian model performs slightly better than the Gamma model on the eBay data, which we attribute to an almost normal or at least symmetrical distribution of valuations. The third paper compares the model in the first paper to a directly comparable model for private values. We find many interesting empirical regularities between the models, but no strong and consistent evidence in favor of one model over the other. In the last paper, we consider auctions with both private-value and common-value bidders. The equilibrium bid function is given as the solution to an ordinary differential equation, from which we derive an approximate inverse bid as an explicit function of a given bid. The paper proposes an elaborate model where the probability of being a common value bidder is a function of covariates at the auction level. The model is estimated by a Metropolis-within-Gibbs algorithm and the results point strongly to an active influx of both private-value and common-value bidders. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Epub ahead of print. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

This thesis is about the economic aspects of public procurement of services through auctionsin Sweden. It focuses on two different institutions, auctions used to find foste r-parents forboarded out children in the 19th century, and auctions of cleaning service contracts in the 20 thcentury. I n both cases, the contracting entity is the municipality or its representative, thelowest bidder wins the auction, and is paid in accordance with his/her bid.In the child auctions, c hildren were allotted to foster-parents by means of an open biddingprocess, the descending English auction, where the bids were given continuously to theauctioneer. In modern public procurement sealed bids ar e used in accordance with the firstprice,sealed bid auction. The first part of this thesis is about price formation in the childauctions and a study is made of the children who were auctioned several times, indicatingasymmetric information among bidders or adverse selection in this market. These subjects arestudied using field data on 601 child auctions held in Northern Sweden during the period 1863to 1889. The empirical findings in the first paper suggest that the foster-parents had a cleareconomic motive in these auctions. The child characteristics significantly affect the amount ofcompensation paid to the foster-parent. There is also evidence that farmers preferred older,more productive children. The second paper studies whether a re-auctioned child commandeda higher or lower price than a child that was not re-auctioned. The results indicate some formof asymmetric information because foster-parents demanded a higher level of compensationfor a re-auctioned child. The results also suggest that the probability that a child was reauctionedincreased if he/she was not healthy.The third paper in the thesis discusses a kind of "paradox". Although there is a competitiveeffect on the bids in the auction of cleaning service contracts, the contracting entity has anoption, given by law, to restrict the number of bidders. In th is paper, an implementation costis introduced fo r the contracting entity to justify such a restriction. The results, based onSwedish municipality data, indicate that contract and municipality characteristics, assumed toaffect the implementation cost, affect the volume of the procurement, and the number ofbidders, but not necessarily the choice of allocation mechanism. The final paper studiesregional differences in bids, costs, and competition in municipal procurement using the samedata as in paper [3]. The results show higher estimated costs for completing the contract, butlower estimated mean bids in the major city area of Stockholm compared with the res t of thecountry. This is explained by lower profit margins and higher operational costs in the majorcity area. An analysis is also carried out of why the lowest bidder is not always the contractedbidder. / <p>Härtill 4 delar.</p> / digitalisering@umu