The U.S. Forest Service sells the right to harvest timber via auctions. In 1981, the contracts became more restrictive. One would expect this to have an effect on the price of the contracts. Haile (American Economic Review 2001) presents summary statistics that can be used to investigate this.
In a certain region, there were 262 auctions before 1981.
The sample mean and standard deviation of the winning bids were 138.27 and 66.39, respectively.
In 34 auctions after 1981, the sample means and standard deviations were 87.81 and 56.15, respectively.
Can the difference be attributed to randomness alone? i.e., is the average auction price before 1981 the same as after 1981?
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