The low key theory and practice of auctions
A best-selling staple of front-of-store displays in airport bookshops has been Bringing Down the House, the account of how several students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology apparently found a legal way of extracting several million dollars from the casinos of Las Vegas.
A book by Paul Klemperer, the Oxford academic, might have rivalled that placement had it justifiably been entitled "Going, going, gone: the inside story of how I helped take the British telecoms industry for ?2bn". Since he is a very proper academic, it wound up instead with the less thrilling title Auctions: Theory and Practice.
Clearly, Prof Klemperer, who advised the UK government in its spectacularly successful auction of third-generation (3G) mobile phone licences, is leaving the blockbuster for another day.
This book is a straight- forward account of the basic theory of how auctions work, an intriguing (for economists) but slightly esoteric diversion into how auction theory can illuminate other areas in economics. It contains some conclusions on auction design and a detailed discussion of the European 3G auctions in 2000 that attempts to match the theory to the outcome.
Auctions have long been an essential tool for allocating scarce resources, used particularly by governments to get the best price for assets such as sovereign bonds and mineral concessions. But the wildly differing outcomes of the series of European 3G auctions focused attention within both the business and economics worlds on auction design. That the UK government hauled in a sum equivalent to �650 ($793) per head of population as opposed to the �20 per head brought in by the Swiss version is substantially down to the way the auctions were designed. The design of auctions is now clearly a subject of mainstream business relevance.
That said, as a handy guide to auctions and applications of auction theory for non-experts, this book has some flaws.
Written as a collection of independent lectures rather than a coherent whole, it suffers from inevitable repetition, and the accessibility of the different chapters for readers without a background in technical economics varies considerably. The most interesting sections for more general readers are the case studies of the European 3G auctions, which contain detailed discussions of how the strategies of the bidders interacted with the design of the auction.
Having been involved in auction design himself, Prof Klemperer's insights are valuable and often intriguingly counter-intuitive. One of his central conclusions is the paradoxical view that, when it comes to designing auctions, auction theory per se is not much use. It tends to focus too much on situations in which there are a fixed number of bidders and the bidders do not collude with each other.
In practice, increasing the number of bidders that can be attracted into an auction, and making sure they do not have incentives to conspire against the auctioneer, are the critical elements of making an auction yield as much revenue as possible. Like the MIT students who worked out a way to count cards in blackjack, bidders have ruthlessly sought out the large potential gains from exploiting weaknesses in badly- designed auctions.
The disastrous Swiss 3G auction, for example, used a simple open ascending auction for four licences, and in effect sanctioned collusion by allowing joint bids from companies up to the last minute rather than trying to maximise the number of applicants. The potential number of bids fell from nine to four the week before the auction. With no competition, and being able to monitor each others' bids all the way through, the bidders walked off with ludicrously cheap licences.
Prof Klemperer's preferred course in such cases is an ascending auction followed by sealed bids at the last stage once the bidding is down to the last few companies. This discourages collusion by making it impossible for companies to be sure that their co-conspirators stick to any deal, and encourages entrants into the bidding process by giving them a shot against established incumbents.
This kind of analysis, rather than relying on esoteric auction theory, is common-or-garden undergraduate microeconomics. It is also common sense. The chance for companies to appropriate large gains in any market is minimised when they are subject to effective competition and entrants can undercut them.
What is true for companies producing cars is true for companies bidding in auctions. "In short," as Prof Klemperer puts it, "good auction design is mostly good elementary economics."
低调的拍卖理论与实践
近期，机场书店门口最显眼位置摆放的畅销书之一是《搞垮赌场》(Bringing Down the House)，该书记述了数名麻省理工学院的学生在赌城拉斯维加斯运用合法技巧赚取数百万美元的故事。
其实，牛津大学学者保罗?克伦佩雷尔(Paul Klemperer)撰写的书，也可能被摆放到如此显眼的位置，只要他当仁不让地把书名定为《第一次，第两次，最后一次，成交：我如何策划从英国电信行业得到220亿英镑的内幕》。但克伦佩雷尔教授是一位中规中矩的学者，所以他取了一个不那么商业化的书名：《拍卖：理论与实践》（Auctions: Theory and Practice）。
显然，克伦佩雷尔教授无意角逐畅销书的光环。他曾在英国第三代移动通信(3G)经营许可的拍卖过程中为英国政府提供建议。那次拍卖取得了巨大的成功。
此书以直截了当的方式介绍拍卖的基本原理，还有一段耐人寻味(对经济学家而言)但略嫌深奥的插曲，论述拍卖理论对经济学其他领域的启示。书中含有关于拍卖设计的一些结论，并详尽探讨了2000年几个欧洲国家举行的3G拍卖，以期使理论与实际相符。
长期以来，拍卖一直是分配稀有资源的必要工具，尤其是被各国政府用于获得国有资产(如国债和采矿权)的最优价格。但欧洲各国3G拍卖结果之间的巨大差异，使商界和经济学界都把关注的目光投向拍卖设计。英国政府之所以一举捞进人均650欧元(合793美元)的拍卖收入，瑞士政府之所以只得到人均20欧元的拍卖收入，在很大程度上是由拍卖设计决定的。因此，拍卖设计现已成为具有重大现实意义的主流商业课题。
可是，作为一本面向非专家的拍卖及拍卖理论应用指南，此书存在一些缺陷。
此书并非内容连贯的系统论述，而是一系列独立讲座的集锦，因此不可避免地存在重复，而且对于不熟悉技术经济学(technical economics)的读者而言，不同章节的难易程度相差甚大。普通读者最感兴趣的部分，应该是有关欧洲3G拍卖的案例研究。在这里，作者详尽探讨了竞拍者的策略与拍卖设计之间如何相互作用。
作为曾亲自参与拍卖设计的圈中人，克伦佩雷尔教授的洞察很有价值，而且往往与人们的直觉相抵触，因而颇为耐人寻味。他的中心结论之一，是一种看似矛盾的观点：就拍卖设计而言，拍卖理论本身是没有什么用处的，因为这种理论过于注重某些特定的情形，即竞拍者的数目固定不变，而且相互之间不会串通。
在具体实践中，增加拍卖所能吸引的竞拍者数目，并确保这些竞拍者没有理由合谋对付拍卖者，都是使拍卖收入最大化的关键要素。就象那几个麻省理工学生研究出在“二十一点”牌局中如何数牌一样，竞拍者也会无情地利用设计欠佳的拍卖所暴露的弱点，为自己谋得最大利益。
遭受惨败的瑞士3G拍卖就是这样一个例子。该次拍卖的标的为四份经营许可，采用简单的开放式递增竞拍方式，并全程允许各公司联合竞拍，而不是试图使申请人的数目最大化，实际上无异于默许竞拍者串通。在拍卖之前的一个星期，潜在的竞拍数目从九份跌落到四份。在竞拍者之间既没有竞争，又能全程相互监视竞拍细节的情况下，这些竞拍者以可笑的低价得到了经营许可。
对于这种拍卖，克伦佩雷尔教授的主张是：先采用递增竞拍方式，然后，在竞拍者只剩下少数几家公司的最后阶段，改用密封竞价(sealed bids)方式。这就有助于阻止串通，因为竞拍者无法得知与其合谋的其他竞拍者是否言而有信；这种方式还有助于鼓励新企业参与竞拍，让它们有机会与老牌运营商一争高低。
这种分析，与深奥的拍卖理论无关，靠的是本科水平的微观经济学常识，或者干脆就是常识。当企业遭遇有效的=竞争，而且还有新企业能够加入竞争时，它们从市场上分到厚利的机会自然就被最小化了。
适用于汽车制造企业的规律，也同样适用于在拍卖中参与竞拍的企业。“总之，”如克伦佩雷尔教授所说，“好的拍卖设计，在很大程度上是关于有效运用初级经济学知识。”
