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Papers

Auction Theory

“An Extension of Ausubel's Auction for Heterogeneous Discrete Goods,” (Submitted for Publication)

Ausubel’s Auction for Heterogeneous Discrete Goods When Values are Interdependent,” (Submitted for Publication)

“An Efficient Auction for Heterogeneous Discrete Goods,” (Work in Progress).

“Unification of Auction and Matching Mechanisms,” (Work in Progress)

“Axiomatic Analysis of Auction Rules,” (Work in Progress).

 

Law and Enforcement

“Choice of Law Enforcement,” (Submitted for Publication)

“Private vs. Public Externalities and Enforcement.”

 

Presentations

“An Extension of Ausubel's Auction for Heterogeneous Discrete Goods,”

Whitman College, May 2009

Central Michigan University, May 2009

GAMES 2008, Third World Congress of the Game Theory Society, Evanston, Illinois, July 2008.

SED 2008, 5th Conference on Economic Design, Ann Arbor, Michigan, June, 2008

Virginia Commonwealth University, May 2008

 

 

Other Papers

“The Design of an Experimental Study on Elections and Some Negative Results on Strong Nash Implementation,” unpublished M.A. Thesis, Bogazici University, 1999.

“On Strongly Implementable Social Choice Correspondences,” mimeo., Bogazici University, 1998.

“Notes on the Refinements of the Broad Majoritarian Compromise,” with Murat R. Sertel, mimeo., Bogazici University, 1998.

 

 

Abstracts of Recent Papers

 

Essay 1: An Extension of Ausubel's Auction for Heterogeneous Discrete Goods [Job Market Paper]

Ausubel's dynamic private-values auction for heterogeneous discrete goods, Ausubel (2006), yields an efficient equilibrium outcome but it is designed for a limited class of environments. If bidders' values for bundles of goods are not integers, then the auction mechanism may not yield an efficient allocation without any information on bidders' values. In this paper, I extend Ausubel's auction for heterogeneous discrete goods to real-valued quasilinear utility functions. The mechanism I propose reaches a Walrasian equilibrium price vector in finite “steps” without any additional information on bidders' values. In the extension of Ausubel's auction, truthful bidding constitutes an efficient equilibrium. [DOWNLOAD] (Submitted for Publication)

 

 

Essay 2: Ausubel's Heterogeneous Goods Auction When Values are Interdependent

When heterogeneous goods are to be auctioned in environments where bidders have interdependent values, no auction has been designed that yields efficient allocation. In interdependent-values setting, each bidder's value for a bundle of goods depends on the profile of signals in the society. So, bidders do not know their own values for goods. Therefore, bidders do not know at what price to lower the quantity they demand to maximize their utilities as the price increases. Perry and Reny (2005) introduce strategies and show that these strategies, Perry-Reny strategies, constitute an efficient equilibrium in Ausubel's homogeneous goods auction, Ausubel (2004). In this paper, I show that an extension of these Perry-Reny strategies for heterogeneous goods constitute an efficient equilibrium in Ausubel's heterogeneous goods auction, Ausubel (2006), when there are two bidders with interdependent values and utilities are separable in goods. [DOWNLOAD] (Submitted for Publication)

 

Essay 3: Choice of Law Enforcement

I derive preferences of people over equilibrium enforcement levels and show that it is impossible to have agents with “completely opposite” preferences over the enforcement level in the same society. [DOWNLOAD] (Submitted for publication.)

 

Essay 4: Private vs. Public Externalities and Enforcement

Law and enforcement policy is among the key elements of a civil society that ensures the achievement of a higher social welfare. I study socially optimal law and enforcement policy making under two different environments. In the first environment, private externalities, an activity a person engages harms equally likely everyone in the society. In the second environment, public externalities, it harms the whole society. I show that social welfare functions of these two problems are the same under certain conditions. Polinsky and Shavell (1984) show that the optimal level of punishment in equilibrium is such that expected level of punishment is less than the harm it causes. I generalize their result to public and private externality environments where all agents are either risk neutral or risk averse with respect to uncertainties in harms they face. On the other hand, by allowing private and public externality acts in the same environment, I show that even though contribution of agents to the public harm is greater than the harm they may cause by choosing private externalities, the punishment level of a private externality may be greater than the punishment level of public externality if agents are sufficiently risk averse. This result shows the limitation of a result in Shavell (1992), and also shows that the distinction between private and public externalities is important. [DOWNLOAD]