Winning Play in Spectrum Auctions

Jeremy Bulow, Jonathan Levin and Paul Milgrom

No 14765, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We describe factors that make bidding in large spectrum auctions complex -- including exposure and budget problems, the role of timing within an ascending auction, and the possibilities for price forecasting -- and how economic and game-theoretic analysis can assist bidders in overcoming these problems. We illustrate with the case of the FCC's Advanced Wireless Service auction, in which a new entrant, SpectrumCo, faced all these problems yet managed to purchase nationwide coverage at a discount of roughly a third relative to the prices paid by its incumbent competitors in the same auction, saving more than a billion dollars.

JEL-codes: C72 D44 L21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gth
Note: IO
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14765.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Winning Play in Spectrum Auctions (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14765

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14765

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().