Search

Despite Bangladesh being the world's fifth-largest aquaculture producer, ensuring quality fish supply and food safety is a major challenge. Illegal practices and the presence of harmful microorganisms consistently compromise the integrity of food items throughout the value chain. To address this, a study was conducted in Bangladesh aimed to estimate consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for safer Tilapia, Pangasius, and Rohu fish using an experimental auction method. Results revealed that consumers' average willingness to pay was 29%, 10%, and 21% more for safer Tilapia, Pangasius, and Rohu, respectively, compared to less safe options despite being unaware of specific safety attributes or production practices. After getting information about the aquaculture practices used in fish production, bacterial pathogens, antibiotic levels, and heavy metal content, participants expressed their willingness to pay a higher premium of 52% for safer Tilapia, 39% for safer Pangasius, and 34% for safer Rohu fish. This dynamic illustrates that when consumers possess comprehensive product safety information, their willingness to pay becomes more rational and sensitive to minimize health risks. This WTP is more for safer fish, underscoring the critical role of safety certificates and labeling in meeting the needs of an increasingly health-conscious population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An auction is commonly used to sell limited resources in modern society. M+1st-price auction sells M identical goods to B bidders. The top M winners can buy the goods at the M+1st-price. Each bidder sends their bids secretly as a bit-slice bidding vector to a trusted manager. Bit-slice is commonly used to compare secret values without revealing them. However, the bit-slice bidding vector also limits the upper bound of a bid as the length of the bidding vector. A binary format bidding vector was proposed to increase the bid upper bound to an exponential scale. For example, given a bidding vector with length 32, a binary format bidding vector can increase the bid upper bound from 32 to two to the power of 32. However, previous protocols that use binary format bidding vectors require a somewhat homomorphic encryption (SHE) and a trusted manager. To make sure no party except the bidder itself knows its bid, our protocol does not have any managers. Instead, each bidder interacts with the Smart Contract independently. We propose a zero-knowledge proof that allows our protocol only requires partially homomorphic encryption such as an ElGamal encryption. To our best knowledge, our protocol is the first secure M+1st-price auction protocol that can reach an exponential bid upper bound without a manager and SHE.

We investigate Groves mechanisms for economies where (i) a social outcome specifies a group of winning agents, and (ii) a cost function associates each group with a monetary cost. In particular, we characterize both (i) the class of cost functions for which there are Groves mechanisms such that the agents cover the costs through voluntary payments, and (ii) the class of cost functions for which there are envy‐free Groves mechanisms. It follows directly from our results that whenever production efficient and envy‐free allocations can be implemented in dominant strategies, this can moreover be done while funding production through voluntary payments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the smart grid, electricity price is a key element for all participants in the electric power industry. To meet the smart grid's various goals, Demand-Response (DR) control aims to change the electricity consumption behavior of consumers based on dynamic pricing or financial benefits. DR methods are divided into centralized and distributed control based on the communication model. In centralized control, consumers communicate directly with the power company, without communicating among themselves. In distributed control, consumer interactions offer data to the power utility about overall consumption. Online auctions are distributed systems with several software agents working on behalf of human buyers and sellers. The coordination model chosen can have a substantial impact on the performance of these software agents. Based on the fair energy scheduling method, we examined Vickrey and Dutch auctions and coordination models in an electronic marketplace both analytically and empirically. The number of software agents and the number of messages exchanged between these agents were all essential indicators. For the simulation, GridSim was used, as it is an open-source software platform that includes capabilities for application composition, resource discovery information services, and interfaces for assigning applications to resources. We concluded that Dutch auctions are better than Vickrey auctions in a supply-driven world where there is an abundance of power. In terms of equity, Dutch auctions are more equitable than Vickrey auctions. This is because Dutch auctions allow all bidders to compete on an equal footing, with each bidder having the same opportunity to win the item at the lowest possible price. In contrast, Vickrey auctions can lead to outcomes that favor certain bidders over others, as bidders may submit bids that are higher than necessary to increase their chances of winning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online retailers often sell products using a socially competitive second‐price sealed‐bid auction known as a Vickrey auction (VA), an incentivized demand‐revealing mechanism used to elicit players' subjective values. The VA presents a situation of risky decision‐making, which typically implements value processing and a loss aversion mechanism. Neural outcome processing of VA bids are not known; this study explores this for the first time using EEG. Twenty‐eight healthy participants bid on household items against an anonymous, computerized opponent. Bid outcome event‐related potentials were predicted to differentiate between three conditions: outbid (no‐win), large margin win (bargain), and small margin win (snatch). Individual loss aversion values were evaluated in a separate behavioral experiment offering gains or losses of variable amounts but equal chances against an assured gain. Processing outcomes of VA bids were associated with a feedback‐related negativity (FRN) potential with a spatial maximum at the vertex (251–271 ms), where bargain win trials resulted in greater FRN amplitudes than snatch win trials. Additionally, a P300 potential was sensitive to win versus no‐win outcomes and to retail price. Individual loss aversion level did not correlate with the strength of FRN or P300. Results show that outcome processing in a VA is associated with FRN that differentiates between relatively advantageous and less advantageous gains, and a P300 that distinguishes between the more and less expensive auction items. Our findings pave the way to an objective exploration of economic decision‐making and purchasing behavior involving a widely popular auction. This study is the first to utilize a prominent online purchasing paradigm to provide insight into the neural mechanisms of economic decision‐making under risk. Feedback‐related potentials showed sensitivity to instantaneous evaluations of the relative value of gain outcomes, and encoded the magnitude of the auctions outcome rewards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we have proposed a completely fair energy scheduling mechanism for a smart distributed multi-microgrid system which guarantees that the energy is scheduled fairly among all the buyer microgrids (MGs). It is a non-priority based starvation free mechanism as all the buyers are treated equal and every buyer MG gets at least some portion of its energy requirement fulfilled through the internal trading. The energy scheduling is done in two phases: during phase I, energy is equally distributed among all the buyer MGs. Because of this equal distribution of energy, the buyer MGs are benefited as they are not required to purchase their entire energy requirement from utility grid at higher price. During phase II, Vickrey auction scheme is used to schedule the remaining energy amongst the buyer MGs whose energy requirements were not fulfilled during the first phase. We have evaluated the proposed mechanism for a sample instance of microgrid network by simulating the environment. The simulation demonstrates that using the proposed mechanism the total energy buying cost for all buyer MGs is reduced greatly compared with the schemes where only auctioning is used for internal trading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Produce that does not meet sellers' esthetic standards may be redirected to alternative uses or wasted, but consumer trends indicate potential marketability of blemished produce. We conduct a nonhypothetical experimental auction to elicit consumer willingness-to-pay (WTP) for produce of varying degrees of blemish and test whether valuations are affected by (1) information on food waste resulting from grocery stores' esthetic standards and (2) additional information on the environmental impacts of food waste. WTP for blemished produce increases as consumers become informed, but the information effects vary by blemishing degree. Market simulations indicate that introducing blemished produce can increase retailer revenue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conduct laboratory experiments for the multi-unit Vickrey auction with and without advice to subjects on strategy-proofness. The rate of truth-telling among the subjects without advice stays at 20%, whereas the rate increases to 47% among those who have received advice. By conducting similar experiments for the pay-your-bid auction, which is not strategy-proof, we confirm that the increase in truth-telling is due significantly to the net advice effect (i.e., the effect beyond the so-called experimenter demand effect). Moreover, we find that providing advice improves efficiency in the Vickrey auction, particularly in the early periods, when the subjects are less experienced. In general, subjects tend to overbid in Vickrey auction experiments. Our results indicate the possibility that providing simple advice decreases such overbidding by promoting a better understanding of the strategy-proofness of the Vickrey auction. Strategy-proof mechanisms are sometimes criticized because players often fail to recognize the benefit of telling the truth. However, our observations show that introducing advice on the property of strategy-proofness helps them behave "correctly." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the smart grid, electricity price is a key element for all participants in the electric power industry. To meet the smart grid’s various goals, Demand-Response (DR) control aims to change the electricity consumption behavior of consumers based on dynamic pricing or financial benefits. DR methods are divided into centralized and distributed control based on the communication model. In centralized control, consumers communicate directly with the power company, without communicating among themselves. In distributed control, consumer interactions offer data to the power utility about overall consumption. Online auctions are distributed systems with several software agents working on behalf of human buyers and sellers. The coordination model chosen can have a substantial impact on the performance of these software agents. Based on the fair energy scheduling method, we examined Vickrey and Dutch auctions and coordination models in an electronic marketplace both analytically and empirically. The number of software agents and the number of messages exchanged between these agents were all essential indicators. For the simulation, GridSim was used, as it is an open-source software platform that includes capabilities for application composition, resource discovery information services, and interfaces for assigning applications to resources. We concluded that Dutch auctions are better than Vickrey auctions in a supply-driven world where there is an abundance of power. In terms of equity, Dutch auctions are more equitable than Vickrey auctions. This is because Dutch auctions allow all bidders to compete on an equal footing, with each bidder having the same opportunity to win the item at the lowest possible price. In contrast, Vickrey auctions can lead to outcomes that favor certain bidders over others, as bidders may submit bids that are higher than necessary to increase their chances of winning.

In this paper, a quantum sealed-bid protocol based on semi-quantum bidders is proposed. The protocol uses Bell states to encrypt message and realizes the process that bidders can directly transmit bidding information to the auction center safely. Its essence is a semi-quantum secure direct communication protocol using Bell states. Unlike most similar protocols, our scheme eliminates the trusted third-party Trent and sets the auction center Charlie as completely honest. Considering that the auction involves human activities, too many quantum servers are not only costly, but also unrealistic. Therefore, we set the bidders as semi-quantum users and implement the Vickrey auction. In addition, the security analysis shows that our scheme has high security and is completely feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose the first auctioneer-free sealed-bid auction protocol with a linear computation and communication complexity $O(c)$ , $c$ being the bit length of the bid price. Our protocol, called Self-Enforcing Auction Lot (SEAL), operates in a decentralized setting, where bidders jointly compute the maximum bid while preserving the privacy of losing bids. In our protocol, we do not require any secret channels between participants. All operations are publicly verifiable; everyone including third-party observers is able to verify the integrity of the auction outcome. Upon learning the highest bid, the winner comes forward with a proof to prove that she is the real winner. Based on the proof, everyone is able to check if there is only one winner or there is a tie. While our main protocol works with the first-price sealed-bid, it can be easily extended to support the second-price sealed-bid (also known as the Vickrey auction), revealing only the winner and the second highest bid, while keeping the highest bid and all other bids secret. To the best of our knowledge, this work establishes to date the best computation and communication complexity for sealed-bid auction schemes without involving any auctioneer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a field experiment, we study the revenue-generating properties of premium auctions. In a premium auction, the runner-up obtains a premium for driving up the price paid by the winner. Previous research, both theoretical and in the lab, has shown that the relative performance of premium auctions compared to standard auction formats is context-specific. In the experiment, we compare two types of premium auctions with the standard Vickrey auction selling high-quality, limited-edition posters in an online auction. We observe that neither premium auction raises higher revenue than the Vickrey auction. Revenue dispersion in the Amsterdam auction, one of the premium auctions, is lower than that in the other two auctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Core-selecting auctions were proposed as alternatives to the Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) mechanism for environments with complementarities. In this paper, we consider a simple incomplete-information model that allows correlations among bidders' values. We perform a full equilibrium analysis of three core-selecting auction formats as applied to the "local-local-global" model. We show that seller revenues and efficiency from core-selecting auctions can improve as correlations among bidders' values increase, producing outcomes that are closer to the true core than are the VCG outcomes. Thus, there may be a theoretical justification for policymakers to utilize core-selecting auctions rather than the VCG mechanism in certain environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under marginal-cost pricing, some generators cannot recover their production costs at the market price due to non-convexities in the electricity market. For this reason, most electricity markets pay side-payments to generators whose costs are not sufficiently recovered, but side-payments present the problem of deteriorating transparency in the market. Recently, convex hull pricing and extended locational marginal pricing have been reviewed or gradually introduced to reduce side-payments. Another method is to include non-convex costs in the market price, which is applied in the Korean electricity market. Although it is not generally considered in the electricity market, the Vickrey auction method is also one of the pricing mechanisms that can reduce side-payments. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the financial impact of these alternative pricing mechanisms on market participants through rigorous simulation. We applied the alternative pricing schemes to the Korean electricity market, and the impacts are analyzed by comparing the cost aspect of an electricity sales company and the profit aspect of generation companies. As a result of the simulation study, each pricing mechanism not only differed in the degree to which side-payments are reduced but also has different effects on the type of generators.

Experimental auctions are a popular and useful tool in understanding demand for food and agricultural products. Bidding behavior often deviates from theoretical predictions in traditional Vickrey and Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) auction mechanisms. We propose and explore the bidding behavior and demand revealing properties of a hybrid first price‐Vickrey auction and a hybrid first price‐BDM mechanism. Results from a between‐sample, induced value experiment reveal that, relative to traditional mechanisms, the hybrid first price‐Vickrey auction and hybrid first price‐BDM mechanism significantly reduce participants' likelihood of overbidding, and on average yield bids closer to true valuations. We discuss potential limitations to these hybrid mechanisms as well as implications for their use in eliciting homegrown values that are important for agribusiness and food marketing research. [EconLit citations: C8, C9, Q1, Q13] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]