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2021年BEC商務(wù)英語(yǔ)考試中級(jí)閱讀資料整理：拍賣

You might think that if there's one thing an economist should be able to tell you how to do, it's successfully list an item on the auction website eBay. Auction theorists are, after all, celebrated in the profession; one of them, Susan Athey, won the John Bates Clark medal in April. (Clark medallists, who include Paul Samuelson, Joseph Stiglitz and Steven Levitt, are scarcer than Nobel laureates.)

Yet although the theory of auctions is well-developed, its predictions are sensitive to wrinkles in reality. For example, the standard economic assumption that people are rational is usually a good one: when the price of beer rises, most people drink less beer. But auctions require "if he thinks that she thinks that I think that he thinks" chains of reasoning that tend to have weak links. Those links can easily break if any bidder has any reason to suspect that any other bidder is irrational.

Another theoretical conundrum is entry to the auction. Most auction theorists assume a fixed number of bidders, all poised and ready to bid. But while economists can assume bidders into existence, eBay sellers have to go out and hook them.

This is no minor oversight of auction theory. Paul Klemperer, one of the economists behind the massive "3G" auctions for mobile phone operators, has shown that trivial-seeming features of an auction can have big (and disastrous) effects by repelling bidders. For these reasons and others, wise auction theorists would avoid predicting how a specific auction design will work without knowing much more about the context.

你也許會(huì)認(rèn)為，如果說有一件事經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家應(yīng)該能告訴你如何去做，那就是在拍賣網(wǎng)站eBay上成功登記拍賣物品。畢竟，拍賣理論家在這行享有盛名;其中一位拍賣理論家蘇珊o阿西(Susan Athey)在今年4月贏得了約翰o貝茨o克拉克(John Bates Clark)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)獎(jiǎng)?wù)隆?克拉克獎(jiǎng)?wù)芦@得者還有保羅o薩繆爾森(Paul Samuelson)、約瑟夫o斯蒂格利茨(Joseph Stiglitz)和史蒂文o萊維特(Steven Levitt)，比諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)(Nobel)獲獎(jiǎng)?wù)哌€要罕見。)

然而，盡管拍賣理論已經(jīng)很發(fā)達(dá)，但其預(yù)測(cè)容易受到現(xiàn)實(shí)中一些波瀾的影響。比如說，標(biāo)準(zhǔn)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)假設(shè)人是理性的，這種假設(shè)通常是對(duì)的：在啤酒價(jià)格上漲時(shí)，多數(shù)人都會(huì)少喝一些啤酒。不過，拍賣要求有"如果他認(rèn)為她認(rèn)為我認(rèn)為他那么認(rèn)為"的推理鏈條，而這種鏈條往往存在薄弱環(huán)節(jié)。如果任何出價(jià)方有任何理由懷疑其他出價(jià)方是不理性的，那么，這些環(huán)節(jié)就會(huì)輕易斷裂。

另一個(gè)理論難題是進(jìn)入拍賣。多數(shù)拍賣理論家假定有固定人數(shù)的拍賣方存在，他們?nèi)紲?zhǔn)備好了要出價(jià)。不過，雖然經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家可以假設(shè)出價(jià)方存在，eBay的賣方卻不得不去吸引這些人。

這不是拍賣理論的一個(gè)微小疏忽。為移動(dòng)電話運(yùn)營(yíng)商舉行的大規(guī)模"3G"拍賣背后的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家--保羅o克倫佩雷爾(Paul Klemperer)已經(jīng)表明，一場(chǎng)拍賣中看似微不足道的特點(diǎn)可能會(huì)讓出價(jià)方卻步，造成巨大(和災(zāi)難性的)影響。出于這些和其它原因，明智的拍賣理論家在沒有充分了解整個(gè)背景的情況下，會(huì)避免預(yù)測(cè)某個(gè)具體的拍賣計(jì)劃會(huì)有什么效果。

Fortunately for economists, eBay offers solutions as well as problems. With hundreds of thousands of auctions starting every day, the auction site provides masses of data. And if the publicly available data isn't enough, it's also easy to conduct an experiment "in the field", studying bidders in their natural habitat.

David Reiley, an economist at the University of Arizona, has been studying online auctions since before eBay existed. In a recent paper with Rama Katkar, he investigated whether reserve prices in eBay auctions should be open or secret.

Auction theory offers an argument that a secret reserve price is better. A secret reserve price allows bidders to see each others' gradually ascending bids and thus draw confidence that they are not alone in prizing the item. Even though the bids are too low to beat the reserve, they serve an important purpose of reassuring bidders that others are also interested. An open reserve price on eBay makes that reassurance impossible; nobody can submit a bid below the open reserve, and lacking any signs of confidence from other bidders, there is a danger that nobody may submit a bid above it either.

There are too many imponderables to tell whether this theoretical argument is what really counts in practice. So Katkar and Reiley put the theory to the test by simply selling 50 matched pairs of collectible cards, half with an open reserve price and half with a secret reserve price of the same level. Their conclusion, contrary to the theoretic argument, is that secret reserve prices are counterproductive. Far from stimulating interest they seem to put off bidders,who perhaps fear that a secret reserve is secret because it is far too high. Not wishing to waste their time, many of them just click "back" on their browsers and find somewhere else to bid.

The conclusion may not shake the world but the method is important. David Reiley was one of the first economists to realise that the internet was generating vast amounts of researchable data. Now that data, from sites ranging from eBay and Amazon to Match.com, is enriching the study of economics. It may enrich a few eBay sellers, too.

Tim Harford's book "The Undercover Economist" (Little, Brown) is out now in paperback.

對(duì)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家來說，幸運(yùn)的是，eBay不僅提出了問題，也給出了解決辦法。由于每天都有數(shù)不勝數(shù)的拍賣開拍，這個(gè)拍賣網(wǎng)站提供了大量數(shù)據(jù)。如果可以公開獲得的數(shù)據(jù)不夠用，還可以很容易地進(jìn)行"現(xiàn)場(chǎng)"實(shí)驗(yàn)，在出價(jià)方的自然生活環(huán)境中研究他們。

亞利桑那大學(xué)(University of Arizona)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家戴維o賴?yán)?David Reiley)自eBay出現(xiàn)之前就一直在研究網(wǎng)上拍賣。在最近與拉瑪o卡特卡爾(Rama Katkar)合著的一篇論文中，他對(duì)eBay拍賣中的保留價(jià)格應(yīng)該公開還是保密的問題進(jìn)行了研究。

拍賣理論提出一種看法，認(rèn)為保留價(jià)格保密更好。保留價(jià)格保密可以讓出價(jià)方看到彼此逐漸攀升的出價(jià)，從而激起他們的信心，讓他們相信自己不是唯一欣賞這件物品的人。即便出價(jià)太低、達(dá)不到保留價(jià)的水平，它們也能達(dá)到一個(gè)重要目的--安撫出價(jià)方，讓他們知道其他人也感興趣。在eBay上公開保留價(jià)格就不可能起到這種安撫作用了;任何人都不能提交低于公開保留價(jià)格的出價(jià)，而沒有任何來自其他出價(jià)方的信心信號(hào)，就可能出現(xiàn)沒有人出價(jià)高出保留價(jià)的危險(xiǎn)。

要判斷這種理論觀點(diǎn)在實(shí)踐中是否真的有價(jià)值，有太多不可精確估量的因素。因此，卡特卡爾和賴?yán)ㄟ^拍賣50對(duì)匹配的收藏卡片對(duì)這個(gè)理論進(jìn)行了檢驗(yàn)。他們的方法是，在保留價(jià)相同的情況下，一半公開保留價(jià)，一半保密保留價(jià)。他們的結(jié)論與這種理論觀點(diǎn)截然相反：保密的保留價(jià)達(dá)不到預(yù)期目的。它們不是激發(fā)出價(jià)方的興趣，反而似乎是讓他們退卻，這也許是因?yàn)樗麄儞?dān)心，保留價(jià)之所以保密，是因?yàn)樗叩秒x譜。由于不想浪費(fèi)自己的時(shí)間，許多出價(jià)方就會(huì)點(diǎn)擊瀏覽器上的"返回"鍵，再找別的地方出價(jià)。

這個(gè)結(jié)論也許不會(huì)撼動(dòng)世界，但方法非常重要。戴維o賴?yán)亲钤绨l(fā)現(xiàn)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)正在生成大量可研究數(shù)據(jù)的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家之一。如今，eBay、亞馬遜(Amazon)到Match.com等眾多網(wǎng)站提供的這種數(shù)據(jù)，正在豐富經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)研究。它可能也會(huì)讓少數(shù)eBay拍賣方富起來。

蒂姆哈福德的著作《臥底經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家》(The Undercover Economist)(小布郎出版社(Little, Brown))目前已經(jīng)出版平裝本。

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