Michael Giberson
The team working on the auction design for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has released their final report. The design group is top-notch and the report itself looks pretty good at first glance. What really stood out on my first look at the report, however, was the 50+ page annotated bibliography on auction design topics. (Begins on page 87 of the report.) A quick guide to a lot of literature on auction design, including theory, empirical study, and experimental papers. A great place for, say, a graduate student or advanced undergrad to start, and not a bad resource for some of us well into the after-graduate-school phase of life.
I don’t mean to neglect the main part of the report, either, which also appears to do a good job discussing the research that went into the proposed design for the RGGI auction. I’ve only glanced through it, however.
NOTES: The report is available from this page at the Resources for the Future website. More information about the RGGI is available from the RGGI website. The auction design report was authored by Dallas Burtraw, Resources for the Future; Jacob Goeree, California Institute of Technology; Charles Holt, University of Virginia; Karen Palmer, Resources for the Future; and William Shobe, University of Virginia.