朗读版：如果当年谁真的买了那根头发，算不算遭遇“赢家诅咒”？| CGTN周末随笔

1993年，可能是国内最知名的一场“拍卖会”在央视春晚舞台上起锤。拍品包括“国足第一任外籍主教练施拉普纳在中国熬白的头发”。

从古巴比伦时期到2020年，两位经济学家因研究拍卖而拿到诺贝尔奖。拍卖历史悠久，它能有效对接供给和需求并调节价格，且拍卖品包罗万象，白头发什么的只是小儿科。公元193年，叛乱的古罗马禁卫军杀死了皇帝佩蒂纳克斯之后决定拍卖皇位。竞拍成功的尤利安努斯在位两个月后被弑。

相比之下，拍卖的研究史要短的多。上世纪中期，博弈论革新了经济学，拍卖研究顺势走向策略分析的纵深，围绕拍品价值、拍卖方式、不确定性展开。

相声里拍卖头发并不魔幻。2009年，“猫王”的一撮头发拍出了一万八千美元。这就是个人定价拍品：没有统一估价基础，受个人喜好影响强烈。既然皇位可以拍卖，因此它对几乎所有人都有一定的吸引力，也就是“共同价值”；如果尤利安努斯在掏钱之前能够考虑到这一点的话，也不会惹来杀身之祸。在现实拍卖场里，完全基于个人口味或完全不考虑个人判断的定价都是少数。

不同的竞价方式也会带来决策差异。例如，相声中以“英（国）式拍卖”为主，越喊越贵；“荷（兰）式拍卖”则相反，价格阶梯式下降，直到有人接受为止。

最后，竞拍者各自持有的不对称信息对价格博弈尤为关键，例如，有没有人能够判断出“施大爷”会在1993年黯然下课——拍品价格缩水。

本年度诺奖得主、美国经济学家保罗·米尔格罗姆和罗伯特·威尔逊的贡献之一，就是剖析了这三种因素交织作用下的“赢家诅咒”：出价最高的人可能买亏了。为了规避“诅咒”，买家会过度压价或作壁上观，商品价值因此难以体现，在公共商品拍卖领域，受到影响的是财政收入。

两位经济学家发现，信息流动是解决问题的关键。竞拍人对拍品的了解越充分，竞价就越自信，拍卖产生的价值就越高，换言之“赢家诅咒”对买卖双方的影响就越小。因此，拍卖一方会尽可能多地提供有关信息，拍卖环节的设计也有助于竞拍者通过观察彼此决策来获取更多信息。

《拍卖》火爆后的1994年，米尔格罗姆和威尔逊为美国政府设计的无线电频率同步多轮拍卖大获成功，通过减少流程中的不确定性，解决了当年这一新兴公共商品不能转化为财政收入的难题。

拍卖的本来目的是获取高价，但“赢家诅咒”会让玩家反其道而行之。这说明人与规则、规则下人与人的互动十分复杂。规则并不总是能取得与制定初衷一致的效果。

例如“应试教育”。考试的目的是督促学生掌握知识，但升学竞争让这一规则走样：分数从标准变成了目的。体育课常常让位“主科”就是症状之一。

有趣的是，最近发布的《促进青少年健康发展意见的通知》打算利用“应试教育”的思路，通过把体育纳入中考计分科目并逐步提高分值的方式来督促学生增强体魄。

一根白头发（或者，更实际一点的例子，“猫王”的发束）能拍出上万的价格，说明有效的规则可以释放价值。反之，则是浪费资源。

体育的应试教育实验能不能成功呢？希望不是“一锤子买卖”。

Sidelines | Nobel-winning auction theory: When winning is a curse

Sidelines is a Column from CGTN's Social Media Desk

China's best-known "auction" was staged in 1993. 

The "auctioneers" were a pair of stand-up comedians. On the Spring Festival Gala stage, the most watched TV extravaganza in China, they filled their 10-minute slot with a pretend auction. One of the fictional items on sale was the gray hair of the men's national football team's first foreign coach, Klaus Schlappner, who became a national hero after leading the team to the third ranking in the AFC Asian Cup the year before.

The thousand-year-old concept of auction is powerful in coordinating market participants and setting prices, albeit simple, to which its rapidly growing popularity in China is a footnote. Following China's economic open-up in 1980s, the first auction house opened its door in Guangzhou in 1986. Merely seven years later, people were no longer shocked by the idea of selling a celebrity's silver hair. During the first half of 2020 the industry had realized transactions of more than 200 billion yuan (about $30 billion) in China.

The market format's significance was proven again this year with another Nobel Prize seal. Two American economists, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Economic Science for their development as well as real-life application of ground-breaking auction theories.

One of their most crucial contributions is theorizing the complicated strategy calculations of bidders in relation to the "winner's curse" – the highest bidder ends up overpaying for the good or service auctioned. Likely buyers in an auction are well aware of the woe. In order to avoid the fate, they will bid at a price far lower than their own evaluation or simply opt out a potentially profitable investment opportunity, also at the seller's cost.

Three factors play remarkable roles in a bidder's effort to divert from the "winner's curse." First, format matters. In the fictional auction of the celebrity coach's hair, for example, the format was the most common "English auction" where bidders quote a higher price to win, as opposed to a"Dutch auction" which features downward pricing by the auctioneer until a willing buyer is found. The ways of evaluation vary, too. Zealous fans base their bids for a beloved celebrity's items on private, often emotional value, whereas investors of auctioned treasury bonds or land do the math purely in money terms that's common to all. Finally, the information gap between different bidders can drive the prices down. A bidder who is alarmed by their information disadvantage in an auction is inclined to tighten their purse strings.

Cutting through the three entangled factors by means of game theory, the pair of academics pinpoint the information flow as the key to secure the strategic equilibria that benefit all the parties in an auction.

"An auction format provides higher revenue the stronger the link between the bids and the bidders' private information," said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' review of the economic discovery.

This principle is also reflected in the two laureates' design for the U.S.' Federal Communications Commission to sell telecom operators radio frequencies. The goods were financially meaningless if sold individually, which only gave a boon to resale market that's out of the federal government revenue's reach. The new auction format is called Simultaneous Multiple Round Auction (SMAR), whereby radio frequency bands in different geographic areas are bundled together and put on sale simultaneously. Starting with low prices, the SMAR allows repeated bids, reducing the uncertainty and the winner's curse.

Government practices must be informed by economic discoveries, together with the 2020 Nobel Prize in economics this message is sent out loud and clear. The findings around the winner's curse and how bidders respond to it suggests that a format as simple as an auction could deviate from its purpose as a result of a human agent's unpredictable behavior, let alone more complicated policy designs. 

School tests are a case in point. Grades are for evaluating students' academic performance and informing them on where to improve. But getting higher grades quickly inevitably morphs into a purpose in its own right when it's linked to qualifications or selections for higher education. Designing a test that can serve the multiple ends of education is a science.

The simple design of an auction can effect a transaction of tens of thousands dollars for a cluster of hair (auctioning a celebrity's hair actually happened in 2009 when a pile of Elvis Presley's hair was sold for $18,000). The power unleashed by an effective social framework to energize society doesn't need further proof. But if it is also capable of bringing a curse, we might be as well careful.

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