Competitive Bidding for Offshore Petroleum Leases

Douglas K. Reece

Bell Journal of Economics, 1978, vol. 9, issue 2, 369-384

Abstract: This paper develops a formal model of competitive bidding to analyze some aspects of the federal offshore oil leasing system. The lease sales of interest are often characterized by small numbers of auction participants and by high levels of uncertainty regarding the true values of the leases offered. The model suggests that these circumstances may lead to the capture of a substantial fraction of economic rent by the purchases of leases. Indeed, our results suggest that the government should be willing to fund a substantial exploration effort to bring better presale information into the public domain. Some effects of the level of uncertainty and the number of competing bidders on industry efficiency are also considered.

Date: 1978
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0361-915X%2819782 ... O%3B2-Q&origin=repec full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

Related works:
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:rje:bellje:v:9:y:1978:i:autumn:p:369-384

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://editorialexp ... i-bin/rje_online.cgi

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Bell Journal of Economics from The RAND Corporation
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().