Market designers could not agree how auction rule changes affect performance

Evidence

Some of the Treasury staff became increasingly nervous about performance, regarding the auction design process as a “science experiment” run amok: market designers had always insisted that the performance of the auctions was sensitive to even seemingly minor changes in rules, and yet they could not even agree about how rule changes would affect performance. They wanted to implement both of the alternative auction forms and use the first set of auctions as trial runs, a prospect that surely failed to inspire confidence. And this in the midst of a collapsing world economy. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 859

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Market designers deliberately conflate actual markets with the abstract market — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 2275; Mechanism design theory gave no guidance on basic auction design choices — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 858