Response to Prof. Milgrom and Prof. Ausubel’s Comments on the Second Wye River Package Bidding Conference

In this document I respond to three sections of Prof. Milgrom and Prof. Ausubel’s analysis in their Comments on the Second Wye River Package Bidding Conference. First I examine the expressivity of the auction #31 bidding language. Second I discuss some computational issues that arise from the choice of bidding language, concentrating on computational benefits of the OR-of-XOR language and on how additional features required for straightforward bidding could be added to the OR-of-XOR language without serious computational consequences. Finally I argue that it should not be computationally necessary for the auctioneer to drop bids from one round to the next. I quote from Prof. Milgrom and Prof. Ausubel directly in each case to put my comments in context.