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Full-Text Articles in Economics
Deficit Reduction Through Diversity: How Affirmative Action At The Fcc Increased Auction Competition, Peter Cramton, Ian Ayres
Deficit Reduction Through Diversity: How Affirmative Action At The Fcc Increased Auction Competition, Peter Cramton, Ian Ayres
Peter Cramton
In recent auctions for paging licenses, the Federal Communications Commission has granted businesses owned by minorities and women substantial bidding credits. In this article, Professors Ayres and Cramton analyze a particular auction and argue that the affirmative action bidding preferences, by increasing competition among auction participants, increased the government’s revenue by $45 million. Subsidizing the participation of new bidders can induce established bidders to bid more aggressively. The authors conclude that this revenue-enhancing effect does not provide a sufficient constitutional justification for affirmative action—but when such justification is independently present, affirmative actions can cost the government much less than is …
The All-Pay Auction With Complete Information, Michael R. Baye, Dan Kovenock, Casper G. De Vries
The All-Pay Auction With Complete Information, Michael R. Baye, Dan Kovenock, Casper G. De Vries
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
In a (first price) all-pay auction, bidders simultaneously submit bids for an item. All players forfeit their bids, and the high bidder receives the item. This auction is widely used in economics to model rent seeking, R&D races, political contests, and job promotion tournaments. We fully characterize equilibrium for this class of games, and show that the set of equilibria is much larger than has been recognized in the literature. When there are more than two players, for instance, we show that even when the auction is symmetric there exists a continuum of asymmetric equilibria. Moreover, for economically important configurations …