http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/1839 This is a supplemental blog for a course which will cover how the social, technological, and natural worlds are connected, and how the study of networks sheds light on these connections. Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:27:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/1839#comment-1266 Economic Articles » Blog Archive » Interesting Twist On Auctions and Trading Networks Mon, 05 Mar 2007 04:15:35 +0000 http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/1839#comment-1266 [...] Original post by pion and plugin by Elliott Back [...] […] Original post by pion and plugin by Elliott Back […]

]]> http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/1839#comment-1265 auction - China Political Economy Watch Mon, 05 Mar 2007 03:38:15 +0000 http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/1839#comment-1265 [...] Interesting Twist On Auctions and Trading Networks Wired News copy chief Tony Long recently posted an interesting article entitled Parking Goes to Highest Bidder. The article deals with a startup company in Cambridge, Mass. named SpotScout. SpotScout aims to hire a group of spot scouts to keep a sort of inventory of local parking garages. Price and availability information on participating garages is uploaded in real time to the website. The information is then made available to all subscribers on any web enabled device. As an interesting twist SpotScout also has a feature to allow private residences to register spots in their driveways to sell. It also plans to have Spot Casters to search for open public parking and also may allow drivers to buy and sell information on when they will be leaving their public spots. Public spots cannot however be reserved as garage spaces can, you are simply paying for proprietary information on location and time of openings. This system seems that it could be very interesting from a price dynamics point of view as it represents an amalgamation of a lot of concepts from class. In examining the underlying market networks it is first important to point out that the article title is a slight misnomer. The parkers do not actually bid on prices. In fact the set up is almost more of a dutch auction except there are many sellers and sort of an unknown, variable, number of buyers at any time. The major twists are that people not directly involved in the auction (i.e. parkers not using SpotScout) are also competing for the same spaces, they just don t have knowledge of all of the sellers. The other twist is that the garages have web consoles that allow them to adjust the price of spaces listed on SpotScout in real-time (not all the spaces in one garage are necessarily listed). This pricing system also incorporates the use of a trader, namely SpotScout. The premise is that most people are not familiar with all of the local garages and even if they are, do not want to have to drive into all of them to see if there are available spaces. In this case the trader makes money by taking a fixed portion of all transactions (registration for garages and parkers is free). It would be interesting to see how SpotScout picks the transaction fee because unlike the trading networks we saw in class, the buyers are not required to even use the trader, they can go directly to the seller. All in all it will be interesting to see how this company will affect parking prices in Cambridge. [...] […] Interesting Twist On Auctions and Trading Networks Wired News copy chief Tony Long recently posted an interesting article entitled Parking Goes to Highest Bidder. The article deals with a startup company in Cambridge, Mass. named SpotScout. SpotScout aims to hire a group of spot scouts to keep a sort of inventory of local parking garages. Price and availability information on participating garages is uploaded in real time to the website. The information is then made available to all subscribers on any web enabled device. As an interesting twist SpotScout also has a feature to allow private residences to register spots in their driveways to sell. It also plans to have Spot Casters to search for open public parking and also may allow drivers to buy and sell information on when they will be leaving their public spots. Public spots cannot however be reserved as garage spaces can, you are simply paying for proprietary information on location and time of openings. This system seems that it could be very interesting from a price dynamics point of view as it represents an amalgamation of a lot of concepts from class. In examining the underlying market networks it is first important to point out that the article title is a slight misnomer. The parkers do not actually bid on prices. In fact the set up is almost more of a dutch auction except there are many sellers and sort of an unknown, variable, number of buyers at any time. The major twists are that people not directly involved in the auction (i.e. parkers not using SpotScout) are also competing for the same spaces, they just don t have knowledge of all of the sellers. The other twist is that the garages have web consoles that allow them to adjust the price of spaces listed on SpotScout in real-time (not all the spaces in one garage are necessarily listed). This pricing system also incorporates the use of a trader, namely SpotScout. The premise is that most people are not familiar with all of the local garages and even if they are, do not want to have to drive into all of them to see if there are available spaces. In this case the trader makes money by taking a fixed portion of all transactions (registration for garages and parkers is free). It would be interesting to see how SpotScout picks the transaction fee because unlike the trading networks we saw in class, the buyers are not required to even use the trader, they can go directly to the seller. All in all it will be interesting to see how this company will affect parking prices in Cambridge. […]

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