Auction theory ! ~ Buyer's remorse / the winner's curse - who were behind IPL Auction buys !!

Auctions are characterized as transactions with a specific set of rules detailing resource allocation according to participants' bids. When one thinks of auctions, one typically imagines the auction of a bankrupt person’s property to pay off his creditors. Indeed, this is the oldest form of auction. This simple design of such an auction — the highest open bidder getting the property (or the commodity in question) — is intuitively appealing as well.

Poor IPL for CSK , this time ~ social media is agog with memes on MSD and on Kedar Jadhav.  Once considered an attacking middle-order batsman Kedar Jadhav, after representing Delhi Daredevils and RCB, is playing for  CSK in the eleventh edition of the cash-rich league. The Maharashtra batsman was bought by CSK for whopping INR 7.8 cr. .. .. that was in IPL Auction !!  .. .. perhaps one of the franchisees would next time think of utilizing the services of - Paul R Milgrom or  Robert B Wilson – for their auction theory !!

Onion auctions at Lasalgaon — the country’s largest wholesale market for the bulb — came to a halt on Thursday after traders refused to participate following searches conducted by income tax officials on 12 onion traders’ homes and offices.  According to sources, the crackdown on the traders came following price fluctuations even after the Centre banned the export of onions. Wholesale onion prices at Lasalgaon have been in the range of Rs 4,000 to Rs 4,800 per quintal for the last couple of weeks. Eighteen teams of 110 income tax officials from Nashik, Pune and Aurangabad started searches at the residences and offices of 12 onion traders in Lasalgaon, Pimpalgaon and Nashik late on Wednesday. The searches were carried out due to apprehensions that traders are resorting to hoarding and black marketing.

There is never a bad time to buy art -- or sell it -- even if the economy is floundering and even when there is a pandemic. The long held view that the art market remains steady in the rockiest of times has been borne out with the COVID-19 forced lockdown speeding up the shift to online sales and several auction houses reporting that business is as good if not better than earlier with more high value art being sold. Leading global as well as Indian auction houses told PTI that the number of online auctions held in 2020 have gone up, indicating the increased popularity of bidding over the internet while keeping the significance of physical auctions unchanged. According to London-headquartered Christie’s, the interest in important and unique works of art has historically never been a casualty in times of economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic that led to a slowdown across the world has been no different. “Collectors remain active even at the most unusual times as they are constantly seeking rare works,” Christie’s India Managing Director Sonal Singh said.   The process of buying art has conventionally been an experiential one with collectors preferring to interact with a piece of art before investing up to lakhs of rupees for it.  

Back to IPL and IPL auction – Kedar is not alone.  The wickets in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the 2020 Indian Premier League (IPL) season have allowed the fast bowlers to rule the boost as they provide subtle movement to the ball. On top of that, the age-old formula of using speed to challenge the big-hitters still remains relevant – all the bowlers need to do is identify the right lengths. But nothing could explain the failure of the high value purchases – would the thinktank of the teams consisting of highly paid coaches and strategists own this up !

 

looks like ridiculing ~ Deepak Chahar

Chris Lynn was the first player to be picked for his base price Rs.2 crore by the Mumbai Indians at the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 auction in Kolkata, India Test specialists Hanuma Vihari and Cheteshwar Pujara found no takers, on Thursday. Aussie all-rounder Pat Cummins shattered the cash counters, going for a whopping Rs.15.5 crore to Kolkata Knight Riders.

Now with all teams having played 9 matches each, Chris Lynn is yet to come on the field, while Pat Cummins is more of a batsman who can bowl fast and be hit for flurry of runs.  In eight matches, Cummins has scored 126 runs - more than Dinesh Karthik, Nitish Rana, Andre Russell - and has just managed two wickets in 29 overs he has bowled so far.  Costliest  Cummins has failed to live up to the expectations. He has now spent 250 runs at 8.62, averaging 125.00. He isn't expected to be retained by KKR after the season.  Another big flop is a star player -  Glenn Maxwell. Bought by Kings XI Punjab for a mega amount of Rs.10.75 crore, Maxwell has disappointed both the owners and the fans. The Australian all-rounder has only managed 58 runs off 61 balls that he has faced while with the ball, he has only earned one wicket in 11 overs.  Then there is the saluting  Sheldon Cottrell.  Six matches, 20 overs and only six salutes.  Bought by KXIP for Rs 8.5 crore, Cottrell only picked up six wickets before being dropped from the playing XI.   He has been hit for  176 runs in six matches and was  smashed for five sixes in an over by Rahul Tewatia.

In a comedy movie – ‘Thiruvilaiyaadal Aarambam’   starring  Dhanush, Shriya Prakash Raj- in an auction scene, Danush would dupe Prakashraj into buying a worthless property for a high cost, playing on his ego .. .. making Prakash remorse.  Buyer's remorse is the sense of regret after having made a purchase. It is frequently associated with the purchase of an expensive item such as a vehicle or real estate. Buyer's remorse is thought to stem from cognitive dissonance, specifically post-decision dissonance, that arises when a person must make a difficult decision, such as a heavily invested purchase between two similarly appealing alternatives. Factors that affect buyer's remorse may include: resources invested, the involvement of the purchaser, whether the purchase is compatible with the purchaser's goals, feelings encountered post-purchase that include regret.

Most auctions have the feature that participants submit bids, amounts of money they are willing to pay. Standard auctions require that the winner of the auction is the participant with the highest bid.  Auction theory is an applied branch of economics which deals with how people act in auction markets and researches the properties of auction markets. There are many possible designs (or sets of rules) for an auction and typical issues studied by auction theorists include the efficiency of a given auction design, optimal and equilibrium bidding strategies, and revenue comparison.   The 2020 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences  has been awarded to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson “for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats.”

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences,   is an economics prize administered by the Nobel Foundation and generally regarded as the Nobel award for Economics. The prize was established in 1968 by a donation from Sweden's central bank Sveriges Riksbank to the Nobel Foundation to commemorate the bank's 300th anniversary. As it is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895, it is not a Nobel Prize.   However, it is administered and referred to along with the Nobel Prizes by the Nobel Foundation.  Laureates are announced with the Nobel Prize laureates, and receive the award at the same ceremony. Laureates in the Memorial Prize in Economics are selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.  It was first awarded in 1969 to Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen and Norwegian economist Ragnar Frisch "for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes

This year, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded   Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences   — to Paul R Milgrom and Robert B Wilson. Both winners are currently with Stanford University, where they teach in different departments. In its announcement, the Academy said the pair were receiving the award for “for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats”. They will equally share the 10 million Swedish kronor award money — roughly Rs 8.33 crore.  Essentially, it is about how auctions lead to the discovery of the price of a commodity. Auction theory studies how auctions are designed, what rules govern them, how bidders behave and what outcomes are achieved.

To conclude with another term – ‘the winner's curse’ - a phenomenon that may occur in common value auctions, where all bidders have the same (ex post) value for an item but receive different private (ex ante) signals about this value and wherein the winner is the bidder with the most optimistic evaluation of the asset and therefore will tend to overestimate and overpay. Accordingly, the winner will be "cursed" with  winning bid exceeding the value of the auctioned asset making the winner worse off in absolute terms.   

Interesting ! 

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
19.10.2020.