Competitive Bidding Behavior in Uniform-Price Auction Markets
          
                  Peter Cramton
      
  
, 
            Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
      
            January
      
            2004
      
            
      
  Abstract
              Profit-maximizing bidding in uniform price auction markets involves bidding above marginal cost. It therefore is not surprising that such behavior is observed in electricity markets. This incentive to bid above marginal cost is not the result of coordinated action among the bidders. Rather, each bidder is independently selecting its bid to maximize profits based on its estimate of the residual demand curve it faces. The supplier bids a price for its energy capacity to optimize its marginal tradeoff between higher prices and lower quantities.
