3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
550 General Services Building, 550 General Services Building University of Alberta , Edmonton Alberta
Title: Information Rents in Reverse Auctions using Uniform and Discriminatory Pricing: Experimental and Field Evidence
Speaker: Dr. Peter Boxall, University of Alberta, Department of Resource Economics & Environmental Sociology
Date: Friday, October 7, 2022
Time: 3:30 – 5:00 pm
Location: 550 General Services Building
Please note, this event will be in-person only, no Zoom
Abstract:
Conservation auctions are employed to seek improved levels of environmental quality. Two well-known auction designs often employed are the discriminatory (pay as bid) option or the uniform bid option, where prices are typically set by the highest accepted or lowest rejected bid. In theory, the relative efficiency of these two formats can differ because bidders in the discriminatory design seek higher information rents than in the uniform setting. While this can be shown in the laboratory, bidder behaviour in actual real-world auctions has to our knowledge not yet been explored. In this paper, rent-seeking behaviour is examined in one discriminatory and two uniform real-world auctions used to secure impacted wetland basins for restoration on Canadian prairie agricultural landscapes. We provide evidence that information rents sought by landowners bidding in these auctions to be higher among participants in the discriminatory auction
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