Published April 2011
| Accepted Version
Working Paper
Open
The CMS Auction: Experimental Studies of a Median-Bid Procurement Auction with Nonbinding Bids
- Creators
- Merlob, Brian
-
Plott, Charles R.
- Zhang, Yuanjun
Chicago
An error occurred while generating the citation.
Abstract
We report on the experimental results of simple auctions with (i) a median-bid pricing rule and (ii) non-binding bids (winning bids can be withdrawn) – the two central pillars of the competitive bidding program designed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Comparisons between the performance of the CMS auction and the performance of the excluded-bid auction reveal the problematic nature of the CMS auction. The CMS auction fails to generate competitive prices of goods and fails to satisfy demand. In all proposed efficiency measures, we find the excluded-bid auction significantly outperforms the CMS auction.
Additional Information
The financial support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. Financial support for the sessions conducted jointly between Caltech and the University of Maryland was provided by an NSF grant to Peter Cramton and by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Kathryn Peters and Andre Pradhana contributed to the conduct and analysis of the experiments. The CMS auction was brought to our attention by Peter Cramton who has been central to our understanding of the auction and facilitated the experimental sessions conducted jointly between the Caltech Laboratory for Experimental Economics and Political Science (EEPS) and the University of Maryland Experimental Economics Laboratory. Our understanding of the Nash equilibria of the CMS auction benefited from the comments and writings of Brett Katzman. We thank Erkut Ozbay who organized the experimental laboratory at the University of Maryland and Kristian Lopez-Vargas who joined the experimental team for conducting the experiments during the joint Caltech and University of Maryland experimental sessions.Attached Files
Accepted Version - sswp1346.pdf
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sswp1346.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 99411
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20191023-142447498
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- NSF
- Created
-
2019-10-23Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2019-10-23Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Social Science Working Papers
- Series Name
- Social Science Working Paper
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 1346