Do Auctions Select Efficient Firms?
研究政府拍卖多个许可证给企业，发现当多个许可证和市场竞争存在时，拍卖可能选出低效企业，导致资源错配，因为企业更愿与低效对手竞争。
Abstract. This paper considers a government auctioning off multiple licenses to firms that compete in a market after the auction. Firms have different costs, and cost efficiency is private information at the auction stage and at the market competition stage. If only one license is auctioned, standard results say that the most efficient firm wins the auction (license) as it will get the highest profit in the aftermarket, i.e., it has the highest valuation for the license. This paper argues that this result does not generalize to the case of multiple licenses and aftermarket competition. In particular, we determine conditions under which auctions may select inefficient firms and therefore lead to an inefficient allocation of resources. Strategic interaction in the aftermarket, in particular the fact that firms prefer to compete with the least cost-efficient firms rather than with the most efficient firms, is responsible for this result.