Economics 177
Auctions

Welcome to the Economics 177 web site. The course is taught by Professor Rod Garratt. My office hours are Tuesdays from 10:30 to 12:00 in North Hall 3046. My email address is garratt@econ.ucsb.edu. 

Announcements:

Grades are now posted. The mean on the final was 27.4 out of 35 (78%); five people had near perfect of perfect scores!. I will hold my regular office hours from 10:30 to 12:00 on Tuesday next week if anyone has any questions. Please come to these office hours with your questions rather than emailing me unless you have a class conflict.

Experiments:

Enter bids for the various experiments by clicking the appropriate link.

First Price Sealed Bid Auction Experiment

Second Price Sealed Bid Auction Experiment

Reserve Price Experiment

Popcorn and All-pay auction Experiment

Practice questions: Some of the questions on the final will come from these sample questions: Part I, Part II. Feel free to work on answers with friends. If you have trouble with any of the problems ask me for help.

Syllabus

Practice Math Quiz

Lecture Notes (Protected by Copyright):

Chapters 1 to 4, Chapters 5 and 6

Slides:

Lecture 1 (Introduction)

Lecture 2 (SPA and FPA Experiment)

Lecture 3 (Getting Started)

Lectures 4 and 5 (Bidding Behavior)

Lecture 6 (Efficiency)

Lecture 7 (Reserve Price Experiment)

Lecture 8 (Revenue, PDFs of Revenue for First- and Second-Price Auctions)

Lecture 9 (Quiz 1)

Lecture 10 (Optimal Auction)

Lecture 11 (Analysis of Reserve Price Charts, Second Chance Offer)

Lecture 12 (Popcorn Experiment, Oil Lease Experiment: discrete bids, continuous bids)

Lecture 13 All Pay Auctions

Lecture 14 (Common Value Auctions: Part I (Analysis of Popcorn experiment))

Lectures 15 (Common Value Auctions: Part II)

Lecture 16 (Vickery-Groves-Clark Mechanism)

Lecture 17 (Quiz 2)

Lectures 18-20 (Class Presentations)

Results:

SPA 2 bidder, SPA 5 bidder, SPA 2 bidder with $50 reserve, SPA 2 bidder with $25 entry fee

FPA 2 bidder, FPA 5 bidder, FPA 2 bidder with $50 reserve, FPA 2 bidder with $25 entry fee

Reserve price charts: 2-bidder, 5-bidder, seller value=0, seller value=30

Oil Lease Experiment (Simulated Profits)

Results of popcorn experiment: 2-bidder, 23-bidder

Data plot of cdfs for all pay auction

Assignments:

Assignment 1, Assignment 2, Assignment 3

Instructions:

Chapter 12: Appendix (Experiment Instructions)

Miscellaneous:

Ideal Bootstrapping and Exact Recombination (Bergstrom, Bergstrom and Garratt)