Replication package for "A Wind Tunnel Test of Wind Farm Auctions"

Globally, governments increasingly rely on auctions to advance renewable energy. We study the design of wind farm auctions and analyze the impact of price guarantees and subsidies. While in the theoretical analysis the price guarantee has no effect, our laboratory experiment suggests that it improves efficiency and often increases production and revenue. The price guarantee turns out to nullify correlations between participants' willingness to take risks and their bids, which, in turn, improves efficiency relative to the case without price guarantee. The subsidy is less effective than suggested by theory. Bidders with a higher valuation tend to bid more conservatively than the equilibrium prediction, thus neutralizing the efficiency-enhancing effect of the subsidy. Our results mayhave implications for other auctions in which rights are allocated to enter markets characterized by heavy upfront investments and uncertainty about future payoffs.

全球范围内，各国政府愈发依赖拍卖机制以推动可再生能源发展。我们针对风电场拍卖的机制设计展开研究，分析价格担保与补贴的作用效果。尽管理论分析表明价格担保并无实质影响，但我们的实验室实验显示，该机制可提升项目运行效率，且往往能提高发电量与营收。研究结果显示，价格担保能够消解竞标者风险承担意愿与其投标报价之间的相关性，相较无价格担保的拍卖场景，进而有效提升了整体拍卖效率。补贴的实际效果不如理论预期那般显著：估值更高的竞标者往往会比均衡理论预测的更为保守地报价，从而抵消了补贴本应带来的效率提升效应。本研究结果或可为其他类似拍卖场景提供参考：此类拍卖用于分配市场准入权利，而相关市场普遍存在高额前期投资与未来收益不确定性的特征。