Awarding Monopoly Franchises
研究了在最大化消费者剩余净转移支付的目标下，如何通过竞标授予垄断特许权，发现事后定价高于边际成本可促进事前竞争，且扭曲程度与竞标者数量无关。
The authors analyze how to award a monopoly franchise when the objective is to maximize expected consumers' surplus net of transfer payments to the producer. Potential producers initially possess independent private information about uncertain production costs. Only the chosen producer subsequently observes realized production costs. After awarding the franchise to the producer with the lowest expected costs, prices are optimally set above realized marginal cost. These ex post distortions foster more competitive bidding ex ante. The distortions for any bid-cost pair are invariant to the number of bidders, n, though expected distortions and profits decline with n. Copyright 1987 by American Economic Association.