IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ordeca/v11y2014i4p215-232.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Multiattribute Procurement Auctions: Efficiency and Social Welfare in Theory and Practice

Author

Listed:
  • Gregory E. Kersten

    (InterNeg Research Centre, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec H3H 01A, Canada)

Abstract

One of the standard assumptions in auction theory is that preferences can be represented with quasilinear utility. This assumption is of particular significance in reverse auctions, which are used in procurement. This paper presents an analysis of quasilinear utilities and their implications. Building on observations of scholars in economics and decision sciences, who note that quasilinear preferences may be rare in practice, the paper shows that in the procurement of goods and services, price is often interrelated with costs. When preferences can be represented with convex or concave utilities, the alternatives in which the buyer's surplus is maximized are different from those that maximize social welfare. The result is that reverse auctions may cause a significant loss of social welfare, which is of particular significance for public organizations. The analysis of concave efficient frontiers in the utility space shows that it is possible to determine deals that yield greater social welfare than the winning bids. If the winning seller is willing to share the increase in utility with the buyer who faces a loss, then these alternatives can produce, for both the buyer and the seller, utility values that are higher than the utility values produced by the winning bid.

Suggested Citation

  • Gregory E. Kersten, 2014. "Multiattribute Procurement Auctions: Efficiency and Social Welfare in Theory and Practice," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 11(4), pages 215-232, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ordeca:v:11:y:2014:i:4:p:215-232
    DOI: 10.1287/deca.2014.0299
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/deca.2014.0299
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/deca.2014.0299?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alok Gupta & Stephen Parente & Pallab Sanyal, 2012. "Competitive bidding for health insurance contracts: lessons from the online HMO auctions," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 303-322, December.
    2. Kameshwaran, S. & Narahari, Y. & Rosa, Charles H. & Kulkarni, Devadatta M. & Tew, Jeffrey D., 2007. "Multiattribute electronic procurement using goal programming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(2), pages 518-536, June.
    3. Yeon-Koo Che, 1993. "Design Competition through Multidimensional Auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(4), pages 668-680, Winter.
    4. Susan Athey & Jonathan Levin, 2001. "Information and Competition in U.S. Forest Service Timber Auctions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(2), pages 375-417, April.
    5. John Asker & Estelle Cantillon, 2008. "Properties of scoring auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(1), pages 69-85, March.
    6. Fernando Branco, 1997. "The Design of Multidimensional Auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(1), pages 63-81, Spring.
    7. John William Hatfield & Paul R. Milgrom, 2005. "Matching with Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 913-935, September.
    8. Patrick Bajari & Ali Hortacsu, 2005. "Are Structural Estimates of Auction Models Reasonable? Evidence from Experimental Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(4), pages 703-741, August.
    9. George A. Boyne, 2002. "Public and Private Management: What’s the Difference?," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 97-122, January.
    10. Teich, Jeffrey E. & Wallenius, Hannele & Wallenius, Jyrki & Zaitsev, Alexander, 2006. "A multi-attribute e-auction mechanism for procurement: Theoretical foundations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 175(1), pages 90-100, November.
    11. Bergstrom, Theodore C. & Varian, Hal R., 1985. "When do market games have transferable utility?," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 222-233, August.
    12. Campo, Sandra, 2012. "Risk aversion and asymmetry in procurement auctions: Identification, estimation and application to construction procurements," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 168(1), pages 96-107.
    13. Jeryl L. Mumpower, 1991. "The Judgment Policies of Negotiators and the Structure of Negotiation Problems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(10), pages 1304-1324, October.
    14. Gregory Lewis & Patrick Bajari, 2011. "Procurement Contracting With Time Incentives: Theory and Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(3), pages 1173-1211.
    15. Michael H. Rothkopf, 2007. "Decision Analysis: The Right Tool for Auctions," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 4(3), pages 167-172, September.
    16. David C. Parkes & Jayant Kalagnanam, 2005. "Models for Iterative Multiattribute Procurement Auctions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(3), pages 435-451, March.
    17. Gail Hohner & John Rich & Ed Ng & Grant Reid & Andrew J. Davenport & Jayant R. Kalagnanam & Ho Soo Lee & Chae An, 2003. "Combinatorial and Quantity-Discount Procurement Auctions Benefit Mars, Incorporated and Its Suppliers," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 23-35, February.
    18. Damian R. Beil & Lawrence M. Wein, 2003. "An Inverse-Optimization-Based Auction Mechanism to Support a Multiattribute RFQ Process," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(11), pages 1529-1545, November.
    19. Jay Simon & Francois Melese, 2011. "A Multiattribute Sealed-Bid Procurement Auction with Multiple Budgets for Government Vendor Selection," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 8(3), pages 170-179, September.
    20. Bichler, Martin & Kalagnanam, Jayant, 2005. "Configurable offers and winner determination in multi-attribute auctions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 160(2), pages 380-394, January.
    21. Hurwicz, Leonid & Walker, Mark, 1990. "On the Generic Nonoptimality of Dominant-Strategy Allocation Mechanisms: A General Theorem That Includes Pure Exchange Economies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(3), pages 683-704, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gregory E. Kersten & Tomasz Wachowicz & Margaret Kersten, 2016. "Competition, Transparency, and Reciprocity: A Comparative Study of Auctions and Negotiations," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 693-722, July.
    2. Pham, Long & Teich, Jeffrey & Wallenius, Hannele & Wallenius, Jyrki, 2015. "Multi-attribute online reverse auctions: Recent research trends," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 242(1), pages 1-9.
    3. Yigal Gerchak, 2016. "Procurement (Reverse) Auctions Where Service Providers have Official Ratings," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 18(04), pages 1-10, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pham, Long & Teich, Jeffrey & Wallenius, Hannele & Wallenius, Jyrki, 2015. "Multi-attribute online reverse auctions: Recent research trends," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 242(1), pages 1-9.
    2. Kameshwaran, S. & Narahari, Y. & Rosa, Charles H. & Kulkarni, Devadatta M. & Tew, Jeffrey D., 2007. "Multiattribute electronic procurement using goal programming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(2), pages 518-536, June.
    3. Gregory E. Kersten & Tomasz Wachowicz & Margaret Kersten, 2016. "Competition, Transparency, and Reciprocity: A Comparative Study of Auctions and Negotiations," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 693-722, July.
    4. Lorentziadis, Panos L., 2020. "Competitive bidding in asymmetric multidimensional public procurement," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 282(1), pages 211-220.
    5. Stoll, Sebastian & Zöttl, Gregor, 2014. "Transparency in Buyer-Determined Auctions: Should Quality be Private or Public?," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 459, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    6. Wang, Hong, 2020. "Quality manipulation and limit corruption in competitive procurement," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(3), pages 1124-1135.
    7. Stoll, Sebastian & Zöttl, Gregor, 2012. "Information Disclosure in Open Non-Binding Procurement Auctions: an Empirical Study," Discussion Papers in Economics 13112, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    8. Jason Allen & Robert Clark & Brent Hickman & Eric Richert, 2019. "Resolving Failed Banks: Uncertainty, Multiple Bidding & Auction Design," Staff Working Papers 19-30, Bank of Canada.
    9. Cheng, Chi-Bin, 2011. "Reverse auction with buyer-supplier negotiation using bi-level distributed programming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 211(3), pages 601-611, June.
    10. Stoll, Sebastian & Zöttl, Gregor, 2012. "Information Disclosure in Dynamic Buyer-Determined Procurement Auctions: An Empirical Study," VfS Annual Conference 2012 (Goettingen): New Approaches and Challenges for the Labor Market of the 21st Century 62044, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Ching-Hua Chen-Ritzo & Terry P. Harrison & Anthony M. Kwasnica & Douglas J. Thomas, 2005. "Better, Faster, Cheaper: An Experimental Analysis of a Multiattribute Reverse Auction Mechanism with Restricted Information Feedback," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(12), pages 1753-1762, December.
    12. Benjamin Blau & Clemens Dinther & Tobias Conte & Yongchun Xu & Christof Weinhardt, 2009. "How to Coordinate Value Generation in Service Networks," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 1(5), pages 343-356, October.
    13. Takahashi, Hidenori, 2015. "Strategic design under uncertain evaluations : structural analysis of design-build auctions," Working Papers 15-08, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics.
    14. Papakonstantinou, A. & Bogetoft, P., 2012. "Multi-dimensional auctions under information asymmetry for costs and qualities," MPRA Paper 43563, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Jorge González Chapela, 2019. "Weight Values, Scoring Rules and Abnormally Low Tenders Criteria in Multidimensional Procurement: Effects on Price," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 228(1), pages 55-81, March.
    16. Xiao, Fei & Wang, Haijun & Guo, Shuojia & Guan, Xu & Liu, Baoshan, 2021. "Efficient and truthful multi-attribute auctions for crowdsourced delivery," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    17. Riccardo Camboni Marchi Adani & Paola Valbonesi, 2016. "Favouritism in scoring rule auctions," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0210, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    18. Jens Leth Hougaard & Kurt Nielsen & Athanasios Papakonstantinou, 2016. "A Sealed-Bid Two-Attribute Yardstick Auction Without Prior Scoring," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 827-843, July.
    19. Huang, Min & Qian, Xiaohu & Fang, Shu-Cherng & Wang, Xingwei, 2016. "Winner determination for risk aversion buyers in multi-attribute reverse auction," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 59(PB), pages 184-200.
    20. Karca D. Aral & Damian R. Beil & Luk N. Van Wassenhove, 2021. "Supplier Sustainability Assessments in Total‐Cost Auctions," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(4), pages 902-920, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ordeca:v:11:y:2014:i:4:p:215-232. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.