Free exchange--Winning bids

The Nobel prize for economics rewards advances in auction theory

经济学人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：不仅仅                  Sweden’s Royal Academy of Science：瑞典皇家科学院

Epitomise /ɪ'pɪtəmaɪz/ vt. 象征；体现；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. /əˈsend/ ~ (to sth) 上升；升高；登高；    登基 to ascend the throne

clue /kluː/ n. 线索；（故事等的）情节；vt. 为…提供线索；为…提供情况

In the course of：在···过程中

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：在这方面       Elicit  v. /iˈlɪsɪt/  ~ sth (from sb) ( formal )引出；探出；诱出

Divulge  v. /daɪˈvʌldʒ/  ~ sth (to sb) 泄露，透露（秘密） • Police refused to divulge the identity of the suspect. 警方拒绝透露嫌疑犯的身份。

under the hammer：被拍卖、在拍卖

译文

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，一位将在2012年获得诺贝尔经济学奖的人，被问到规则如何长期改变即将到来的新世纪。他写到：对于我们成果的检测不仅仅是我们对交互经济管理普遍准则理解深度，还有我们如何将这些知识运用解决微观经济工程中的实操问题。瑞典皇家科学院似乎同意他的观点，在今年的10月12日，它将今年的诺贝尔经济学奖授予了同来自斯坦福大学的Paul Milgrom 和Robert Wilson教授，奖励他们在拍卖理论和设计上的成就。同时他们是将经济学看做工程学的典型代表。

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.

拍卖是一种古老的售卖模式，从价值连城的艺术品到渔民的渔获。长期以来，拍卖就少数简单的模式。英式拍卖，升价式拍卖，价高者得；荷兰式拍卖，降价拍卖。起拍价为一个高价，随着降价找到合适的买家。随着拍卖用途扩大，拍卖模式变得越来越复杂。经济学家对拍卖也越来越感兴趣。60年代，William Vickrey（96年诺贝尔获得者），发展了拍卖理论。他评估了竞标者最优策略以及研究了不同拍卖模式的收益、效率特征。但Vickrey的研究相对集中在窄的范围，在他的研究中竞价者对拍卖标的的估值互不影响。然而实际情况，一位竞标者对拍卖标的估值往往来自于其他竞标者和卖家的看法。每一位竞价者都有自己的私人消息渠道，并在拍卖过程中显露出来。

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年代开始分析这些案例。他一开始着手分析有公允价值的拍卖标的但拍卖前不知道，不过最终将是统一价。以埋有油田的一块地皮为例，有可能因为竞拍者对储油量的估计不一样，对其价值有不同的估算。在这种案例中，赢家通常发现其他竞拍者的消息会促使他们拍低价，这也可能说明赢家估值过高，溢价了。这种现象被称为“赢家诅咒”。Wilson在这方面的研究工作为研究更复杂的拍卖形式奠定了分析基础，如将竞拍人士的所有个人估值及对拍卖标的的公允价值进行估算都考虑其中进行分析。例如油田的价值可能取决于竞拍者对储油量的估计和自身抽油成本多少。Migrom先生（博士论文导师是Wilson先生）从他导师的分析冲推导出了很多重要经验。拍卖结构可以从竞拍者探出更多的隐秘信息，例如英式升价拍卖，竞拍中每位参与者都能观察到谁在竞拍什么，谁退出竞拍，从而比其他高度信息保密的竞拍要降低“赢家诅咒”情况。在一些案例中，卖家会更倾向于给竞拍者提供拍卖标的的信息。