Vecon Lab Spectrum Auction: Introduction

This program implements up a series of multi-round auctions in which bidders are given roles of companies who seek to purchase broadcast licenses from a government agency. The licenses pertain to different geographic regions, and each license is for use in a specified "band" of the spectrum of broadcast frequencies. The multi-round auctions continue until no new bids are submitted or until the auctioneer stops the auction. The "provisionally winning" bids are announced after each round, and these determine the minimum bids ("prices") that must be submitted in the subsequent round to stay active in the auction. Activity rules, with a "use it or lose it" property, force bidders to continue bidding or reduce the number of licenses that they can bid for in future rounds. The setup options are not intended to be precise replicas of auction formats that have been used or considered by specific government agencies in the US or in other countries. You may run simultaneous auctions for several broadcast frequency \"bands\" covering the same geographic areas, or you may decide to run a single auction for each geographic area, where the "bands" correspond to mutually exclusive uses (e.g. aviation communications or commercial wireless).


Vecon Lab - May 16, 2012