Free exchange--Winning bids

The Nobel prize for economics rewards advances in auction theory

經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人10月刊

IN 1991 ALVIN ROTH, who in 2012 would share the Nobel prize for economics, was asked how the discipline might change over the century to come. “In the long term”, he wrote, “the real test of our success will be not merely?how well we understand the general principles which govern economic interactions, but how well we can bring this knowledge to bear on practical questions of microeconomic engineering.”?Sweden’s Royal Academy of Science seems to agree. On October 12th it gave this year’s Nobel prize to Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, both of Stanford University, for their work on auction theory and design. Their work epitomises?economics as engineering.

not merely：不僅僅? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??Sweden’s Royal Academy of Science：瑞典皇家科學(xué)院

Epitomise?/?'p?t?ma?z/ vt. 象征；體現(xiàn)；代表（等于epitomize）

Auctions are an ancient mechanism for selling valuable commodities, from fine art to a fisherman’s catch. A few, simple forms of auction have been dominant over time. In an English auction, ascending bids are made until a winner remains; in the Dutch variety, a high opening price is set and is reduced until a bidder is found. Yet as their use has expanded, auctions have become more complex, and economists have taken a keener interest. In the 1960s William Vickrey, who shared the Nobel in 1996, developed what became known as auction theory. He assessed bidders’ optimal strategies and studied the revenue and efficiency properties of different auction formats. But Vickrey concentrated on a relatively narrow set of cases, in which each bidder’s valuation of the good being sold is unrelated to those of the other bidders. In practice, however, what one person believes an auctioned item to be worth often depends on the valuations of other bidders or the seller. Each may have private information about its value, clues to?which are revealed in the course of?the auction.

ascend ?v. /??send/ ~ (to sth) 上升；升高；登高；? ? 登基 to ascend the throne

clue /klu?/?n. 線索；（故事等的）情節(jié)；vt. 為…提供線索；為…提供情況

In the course of：在···過程中

Mr Wilson began analysing such cases in the 1960s. He first tackled scenarios where the item for sale has a common value a value that is uncertain beforehand but, in the end, is the same for everyone. An example might be a plot of land with oil beneath it, where participants may have different estimations of its value, perhaps because each has varying estimates of the quantity of oil. In such cases, the winner often discovers that the information others had about the common value led them to make lower bids. This may mean that the winner overestimated the worth of the item and paid too much, a phenomenon known as the winner’s curse.?Mr Wilson’s work?in this vein?laid the groundwork for the analysis of yet more complex scenarios, which take both bidders’ unique private valuations and estimates of an item’s common value into consideration.?The value of an oilfleld, for instance, might depend on both the quantity of oil in the ground and how cheaply each bidder can extract?it. Mr Milgrom (whose doctoral thesis was supervised by Mr Wilson) derived a number of important lessons from his analyses. Auction structures that elicit more private information from bidders?such as English auctions, where every participant observes who bids what and who drops out reduce the winner’s curse problem compared with formats where very little private information is divulged. In some cases, it may be in the seller’s interest to provide bidders with more information about the item under the hammer.

?in this vein：在這方面? ? ? ?Elicit??v. /i?l?s?t/ ?~ sth (from sb) ( formal )引出；探出；誘出

Divulge??v. /da??v?ld?/ ?~ sth (to sb) 泄露，透露（秘密）?? Police refused to divulge the identity of the suspect. 警方拒絕透露嫌疑犯的身份。

under the hammer：被拍賣、在拍賣

譯文

IN 1991 ALVIN ROTH, who in 2012 would share the Nobel prize for economics, was asked how the discipline might change over the century to come. “In the long term”, he wrote, “the real test of our success will be not merely?how well we understand the general principles which govern economic interactions, but how well we can bring this knowledge to bear on practical questions of microeconomic engineering.”?Sweden’s Royal Academy of Science seems to agree. On October 12th it gave this year’s Nobel prize to Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, both of Stanford University, for their work on auction theory and design. Their work epitomises?economics as engineering.

那是1991年，Alvin Roth，一位將在2012年獲得諾貝爾經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)獎(jiǎng)的人，被問到規(guī)則如何長期改變即將到來的新世紀(jì)。他寫到：對(duì)于我們成果的檢測(cè)不僅僅是我們對(duì)交互經(jīng)濟(jì)管理普遍準(zhǔn)則理解深度，還有我們?nèi)绾螌⑦@些知識(shí)運(yùn)用解決微觀經(jīng)濟(jì)工程中的實(shí)操問題。瑞典皇家科學(xué)院似乎同意他的觀點(diǎn)，在今年的10月12日，它將今年的諾貝爾經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)獎(jiǎng)授予了同來自斯坦福大學(xué)的Paul Milgrom 和Robert Wilson教授，獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)他們?cè)谂馁u理論和設(shè)計(jì)上的成就。同時(shí)他們是將經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)看做工程學(xué)的典型代表。

Auctions are an ancient mechanism for selling valuable commodities, from fine art to a fisherman’s catch. A few, simple forms of auction have been dominant over time. In an English auction, ascending bids are made until a winner remains; in the Dutch variety, a high opening price is set and is reduced until a bidder is found. Yet as their use has expanded, auctions have become more complex, and economists have taken a keener interest. In the 1960s William Vickrey, who shared the Nobel in 1996, developed what became known as auction theory. He assessed bidders’ optimal strategies and studied the revenue and efficiency properties of different auction formats. But Vickrey concentrated on a relatively narrow set of cases, in which each bidder’s valuation of the good being sold is unrelated to those of the other bidders. In practice, however, what one person believes an auctioned item to be worth often depends on the valuations of other bidders or the seller. Each may have private information about its value, clues to?which are revealed in the course of?the auction.

拍賣是一種古老的售賣模式，從價(jià)值連城的藝術(shù)品到漁民的漁獲。長期以來，拍賣就少數(shù)簡(jiǎn)單的模式。英式拍賣，升價(jià)式拍賣，價(jià)高者得；荷蘭式拍賣，降價(jià)拍賣。起拍價(jià)為一個(gè)高價(jià)，隨著降價(jià)找到合適的買家。隨著拍賣用途擴(kuò)大，拍賣模式變得越來越復(fù)雜。經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家對(duì)拍賣也越來越感興趣。60年代，William Vickrey（96年諾貝爾獲得者），發(fā)展了拍賣理論。他評(píng)估了競(jìng)標(biāo)者最優(yōu)策略以及研究了不同拍賣模式的收益、效率特征。但Vickrey的研究相對(duì)集中在窄的范圍，在他的研究中競(jìng)價(jià)者對(duì)拍賣標(biāo)的的估值互不影響。然而實(shí)際情況，一位競(jìng)標(biāo)者對(duì)拍賣標(biāo)的估值往往來自于其他競(jìng)標(biāo)者和賣家的看法。每一位競(jìng)價(jià)者都有自己的私人消息渠道，并在拍賣過程中顯露出來。

Mr Wilson began analysing such cases in the 196os. He first tackled scenarios where the item for sale has a common value a value that is uncertain beforehand but, in the end, is the same for everyone. An example might be a plot of land with oil beneath it, where participants may have different estimations of its value, perhaps because each has varying estimates of the quantity of oil. In such cases, the winner often discovers that the information others had about the common value led them to make lower bids. This may mean that the winner overestimated the worth of the item and paid too much, a phenomenon known as the winner’s curse.?Mr Wilson’s work?in this vein?laid the groundwork for the analysis of yet more complex scenarios, which take both bidders’ unique private valuations and estimates of an item’s common value into consideration.?The value of an oilfleld, for instance, might depend on both the quantity of oil in the ground and how cheaply each bidder can extract?it. Mr Milgrom (whose doctoral thesis was supervised by Mr Wilson) derived a number of important lessons from his analyses. Auction structures that elicit more private information from bidders?such as English auctions, where every participant observes who bids what and who drops out reduce the winner’s curse problem compared with formats where very little private information is divulged. In some cases, it may be in the seller’s interest to provide bidders with more information about the item under the hammer.

Wilson先生60年代開始分析這些案例。他一開始著手分析有公允價(jià)值的拍賣標(biāo)的但拍賣前不知道，不過最終將是統(tǒng)一價(jià)。以埋有油田的一塊地皮為例，有可能因?yàn)楦?jìng)拍者對(duì)儲(chǔ)油量的估計(jì)不一樣，對(duì)其價(jià)值有不同的估算。在這種案例中，贏家通常發(fā)現(xiàn)其他競(jìng)拍者的消息會(huì)促使他們拍低價(jià)，這也可能說明贏家估值過高，溢價(jià)了。這種現(xiàn)象被稱為“贏家詛咒”。Wilson在這方面的研究工作為研究更復(fù)雜的拍賣形式奠定了分析基礎(chǔ)，如將競(jìng)拍人士的所有個(gè)人估值及對(duì)拍賣標(biāo)的的公允價(jià)值進(jìn)行估算都考慮其中進(jìn)行分析。例如油田的價(jià)值可能取決于競(jìng)拍者對(duì)儲(chǔ)油量的估計(jì)和自身抽油成本多少。Migrom先生（博士論文導(dǎo)師是Wilson先生）從他導(dǎo)師的分析沖推導(dǎo)出了很多重要經(jīng)驗(yàn)。拍賣結(jié)構(gòu)可以從競(jìng)拍者探出更多的隱秘信息，例如英式升價(jià)拍賣，競(jìng)拍中每位參與者都能觀察到誰在競(jìng)拍什么，誰退出競(jìng)拍，從而比其他高度信息保密的競(jìng)拍要降低“贏家詛咒”情況。在一些案例中，賣家會(huì)更傾向于給競(jìng)拍者提供拍賣標(biāo)的的信息。