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Dissertation Information for George Deltas

NAME:
- George Deltas

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Economics

SCHOOL:
- Yale University (USA) (1996)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: Essays in auctions and procurement: An analysis of bidding rings, left bids, stochastic properties of winning bids, and two step structural estimators of bidding for contracts

Abstract: Auctions have been a method of commercial transaction for four millennia and, quite possibly, for all this time buyers or sellers have been trying to manipulate the rules to their advantage. Forming bidding rings is one way through which buyers can secure the auctioned off item at a lower price. In some instances, these bidding rings will re-auction the item among themselves in a sale known as the knockout and share the profits. Chapter 1 develops a method which can be used to evaluate the damages that the seller has suffered as a result of the bidding ring's operation using the price information in the knockout.

The auction rules can be manipulated by sellers as well. Frequently, one of the bidders who can not attend an auction will submit a bid to the auctioneer, known as a left bid, and authorize him to bid on his behalf up to this bid. The auctioneer, being privy to the left bid, can cheat on the prospective buyer through the use of 'phantom' bidding if the bidding from the floor stops at a price much lower than the left bid. Chapter 2 specifies under what conditions this type of cheating is profitable, even if it is perfectly anticipated by the buyer.

One of the ways that manipulation of bids in an auction can be detected is to compare the distribution of winning bids in a string of auctions with their expected distribution. This expected distribution is also important to a risk-averse seller in determining which auction format to use. Chapter 3 analyzes the distribution of winning sealed and oral bids both in small samples and asymptotically as the number of bidders goes to infinity.

An essential component for the implementation of the results in the first three chapters is the estimation of distribution parameters from data generated by past auctions. Chapter 4 develops a two-step methodology for the structural analysis of such data and computes the small sample properties of such estimators. Chapter 5 demonstrates this estimating methodology using data from bidding for construction contracts in Connecticut.

MPACT Scores for George Deltas

A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2010-09-27 20:53:47

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