3.6 Conclusions
I have constructed a set up from a data set on the City of Helsinki bus transit auctions to test whether common value and private value bidders make different entry decisions. More specifically, I have tested whether one bidder that is always more influenced by common value components reacts to the amount of expected competition differently than another bidder who always puts more weight on the private value components. Tukiainen (2008) argues that bidders that have garages close to the contracted bus routes are more influenced by the common value elements than bidders with garages further away. I find that the near bidder and the far bidder do not react to changes in the expected amount of competition any differently. Moreover, the analysis supports a conclusion that the entry is exogenous rather than endogenous in this market.
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The analysis was conducted using estimations developed by BHKN. Besides measuring the effects of strategic interactions, the analysis provided information on how the different contract and bidder characteristics affect the entry choices of the bidders. I estimated two different two stage models. Three main results arise from the more flexible estimations: First, there are no strategic interactions, the expected participa- tion of other bidders does not affect the entry decisions. Second, the bidder’s own distance from the garage to the route matters for the common value bidder STA but not for the private value bidder PKL. Third, the contract length matters for STA but not for PKL. In addition, there was evidence of decreasing economies of scale with respect to the size of the contracts for PKL. PKL also avoided contracts where special buses were required. In addition to these results, the parametric estimations show that there is reason to suspect that actually both the bidders operate under decreasing economies of scale with respect to the size of the contracts and that both the bidders avoid contracts where special buses were required. Moreover, according to the first stage of the parametric approach, also PKL seems to care for its own distance and avoids long contracts.
The main policy result is based on the finding that all of the analyzed firms seemed to dislike long contracts. Whether this was statistically significant for all the bidders depends on the estimated model. Longer contract period increases the common future uncertainty and therefore the common value component becomes more important. If the contract period is shortened, it decreases the importance of common costs. Ac- cording to Goeree and Offerman (2003) already this should increase the auctioneer’s revenue. In addition, a decreased contract period should increase entry in this market. With less uncertainty about the common components, the possible increased entry should be more profitable for the auctioneer than with longer contract periods. Thus two separate effects arise from shortening the contract length that would both increase the auctioneer’s revenue. Even if the entry is not increased with shorter contracts, we know that at least entry should not decrease and thus the information effect should work unhindered. Therefore the City of Helsinki should experiment by shortening the average contract length from five to for example four years.