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Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Case For Affirmative Auction: From Conscience To Coffers, Ian Ayres, Peter Cramton May 1995

The Case For Affirmative Auction: From Conscience To Coffers, Ian Ayres, Peter Cramton

Peter Cramton

The Federal Communications Commission’s auction of wireless communication licenses last fall has been criticized as a huge Government giveaway because of the substantial bidding preferences granted to women and minorities. In March, Federal court action delayed the FCC’s June auction until August to consider the legality of similar preferences. But far from being a giveaway, affirmative action actually increased the total amount paid to the Government by about $15 million. Women and minority bidders were granted a 40 percent bidding credit on certain licenses and the right to pay the Government in installments over 10 years at a favorable rate. …


Money Out Of Thin Air: The Nationwide Narrowband Pcs Auction, Peter Cramton Jan 1995

Money Out Of Thin Air: The Nationwide Narrowband Pcs Auction, Peter Cramton

Peter Cramton

The Federal Communications Commission held its first auction of radio spectrum at the Nationwide Narrowband PCS Auction in July 1994. The simultaneous multiple-round auction, which lasted five days, was an ascending bid auction in which all licenses were offered simultaneously. This paper describes the auction rules and how bidders prepared for the auction. The full history of bidding is presented. Several questions for auction theory are discussed. In the end, the government collected $617 million for ten licenses. The auction was viewed by all as a huge success—an excellent example of bringing economic theory to bear on practical problems of …


Decption And Mutual Trust: A Reply To Strudler, Peter Cramton, J Gregory Dees Jan 1995

Decption And Mutual Trust: A Reply To Strudler, Peter Cramton, J Gregory Dees

Peter Cramton

Alan Strudler has written a stimulating and provocative article about deception in negotiation. He presents his views, in part, in contrast with our earlier work on the Mutual Trust Perspective. We believe that Strudler is wrong in his account of the ethics of deception in negotiation and in his quick dismissal of the Mutual Trust Perspective. Though his mistakes may be informative, his views are potentially harmful to business practice. In this paper, we present arguments against Strudler’s position and attempt to salvage the Mutual-Trust Perspective from his attack. Strudler’s work reaffirms the need for a more pragmatic approach to …


Ratifiable Mechanisms: Learning From Disagreement, Peter Cramton, Thomas R. Palfrey Jan 1995

Ratifiable Mechanisms: Learning From Disagreement, Peter Cramton, Thomas R. Palfrey

Peter Cramton

In a mechanism design problem, participation constraints require that all types prefer the proposed mechanism to some status quo. If equilibrium play in the status quo mechanism depends on the players’ beliefs, then the inference drawn if someone objects to the proposed mechanism may alter the participation constraints. We investigate this issue by modeling the mechanism design problem as a two-stage process, consisting of a ratification stage followed by the actual play of the chosen game. We develop and illustrate a new concept, ratifiability, that takes account of inferences from a veto in a consistent way.


Union Myopia And The Taxation Of Capital, Dwight Lee, Robert L. Sexton, Philip E. Graves Jan 1995

Union Myopia And The Taxation Of Capital, Dwight Lee, Robert L. Sexton, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

After an extensive discussion of the nature of the interactions among unions, corporations, and government, we find that government in granting privileges to workers organized into unions implicitly taxes capital formation. The result has been to lessen the attention business decisions pay to the future, to substitute excessive wages for appropriate capital investment, and to reduce the competitive vitality of major U.S. industries.


The Tradeoff Between Oligopsony Power And Cost Efficiency In Horizontal Consolidation: An Example From Beef Packing, John Schroeter, Azzeddine Azzam Dec 1994

The Tradeoff Between Oligopsony Power And Cost Efficiency In Horizontal Consolidation: An Example From Beef Packing, John Schroeter, Azzeddine Azzam

Azzeddine Azzam

In this paper, the authors model the trade-off between regional oligopsony power and cost efficiency resulting from consolidation in a food processing industry. The model can be used to calculate the cost reductions necessary to offset the anticompetitive effects of market power and to compare them to actual cost savings achieved through plant scale or multiplant operating economies. For an application, the authors choose the beef packing industry. For this case, they find that the estimated cost savings necessary to neutralize the anticompetitive effects of consolidation in beef packing are about half the actual cost savings from scale economies.


Union Myopia And The Taxation Of Capital, Dwight Lee, Robert L. Sexton, Philip E. Graves Dec 1994

Union Myopia And The Taxation Of Capital, Dwight Lee, Robert L. Sexton, Philip E. Graves

Robert L Sexton

After an extensive discussion of the nature of the interactions among unions, corporations, and government, we find that government in granting privileges to workers organized into unions implicitly taxes capital formation. The result has been to lessen the attention business decisions pay to the future, to substitute excessive wages for appropriate capital investment, and to reduce the competitive vitality of major U.S. industries.


Union Myopia And The Taxation Of Capital, Dwight Lee, Robert L. Sexton, Philip E. Graves Dec 1994

Union Myopia And The Taxation Of Capital, Dwight Lee, Robert L. Sexton, Philip E. Graves

Robert L Sexton

After an extensive discussion of the nature of the interactions among unions, corporations, and government, we find that government in granting privileges to workers organized into unions implicitly taxes capital formation. The result has been to lessen the attention business decisions pay to the future, to substitute excessive wages for appropriate capital investment, and to reduce the competitive vitality of major U.S. industries.