Behavioral Economics Commons^™

The Relation Between Variance And Information Rents In Auctions, Brett Katzman, Julian Reif, Jesse Schwartz

Jesse A. Schwartz

This paper examines the conventional wisdom, expressed in McAfee and McMillan's (1987) widely cited survey paper on auctions, that links increased variance of bidder values to increased information rent. We find that although the conventional wisdom does indeed hold in their (1986) model of a linear contract auction, this relationship is an artifact of that particular model and cannot be generalized. Using Samuelson's (1987) model, which is similar but allows for unobservable costs, we show that increased variance does not always imply increased information rent. Finally, we give the appropriate measure of dispersion (different from variance) that provides the link …

The Role Of The Law In The Availability Of Public Transit And Affordable Housing In Atlanta’S West End, Elliott Lipinsky

ELLIOTT LIPINSKY

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation that administers federal funds and provides technical assistance for the support of locally operated public transit systems. MARTA / Atlanta metro area are part of FTA Region IV (the Southeast). FTA would be involved, for instance, in financing the federal grant monies discussed above. But actual regulation of operations (i.e., what MARTA does each day, or what MARTA will plan to do regionally) is more closely regulated by Georgia agencies.

Until recently, the Atlanta metropolitan area had no powerful central agency to coordinate regional transit. The …