WORLD-RENOWNED AUCTION Designers

Expert Advice on
Auctions & Market Design

Since 1993, Cramton Associates LLC has provided expert advice to governments and companies on the design of auction markets to best achieve goals. The markets typically involve the trade of many interrelated products. The main applications are in communications (radio spectrum), electricity, financial securities, rough diamonds, top-level domains, wind rights, emissions, and transportation. In addition to auction design, the work also involves advising bidders participating in auction markets.

  • Hundreds of auctions in many industries
  • In over 20 countries around the world

Services

Services include auction design, auction implementation, auction participation, and auction execution. We help regulators design and implement complex auctions to achieve goals, and we help participants develop effective strategies.

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Economic Consulting

Practice Areas

01.

Spectrum Auctions

Spectrum auctions play a critical role in assigning and pricing spectrum for mobile communications. Each year, we advise governments on the design of auctions and work with bidders participating in spectrum auctions. The stakes are high for both governments and participants. Spectrum is a critical input to an essential service.

02.

Electricity Markets

Restructured electricity markets are among the most complex smart markets. The market must balance supply and demand every second, despite large shocks to supply and demand from outages, weather, and other forces. We bring expertise in electricity market design to regulators, system operators, and market participants. 

03.

Antitrust & Competition

Competitive markets stimulate innovation and yield efficient outcomes. In many settings, maintaining competition is difficult because of scale economies or other entry barriers. We have extensive experience in advising regulators and market participants on how to promote competition.

Most Recent

Projects

Designed and built an auction platform for secure, low-latency, global satellite communications (ongoing).

Designed and built a forward energy market (ongoing).

Advised the United Kingdom and the Netherlands on spectrum auction design (ongoing).

Developed a modeling tool for PJM to better understand the impact of market rules and policies on the energy transition (2021-2022).

Advised bidders in auctions for wind rights in the United States and the United Kingdom (2020-2022).

Advised Peru on electricity market design (2021).

Advised FiberRise Communication in the United State’s Rural Development Opportunity Fund Auction to provide broadband service in unserved areas (2020).

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Peter Cramton, Chair

Peter Cramton is Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Maryland. Since 1983, he has conducted research on auctions and market design, with a focus on the design of complex markets to best achieve goals. Applications include electricity markets, financial markets, and auctions for radio spectrum. He has introduced innovative market designs in many industries. Cramton has advised numerous governments on market design and dozens of bidders in major auctions. He is chief economist and advisor for startups in finance, insurance, and communications. From 2015-2021, he was an independent director of the board of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). He received his B.S. in Engineering from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in Business from Stanford University.

Team Members

Pat Sujarittanonta

Principal

Pacharasut (Pat) Sujarittanonta is a Professor of Economics at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and a Principal of Cramton Associates LLC. His research focuses on auctions and market design. He has worked on a variety of issues such as spectrum auctions, antitrust and M&A. He has provided advice on spectrum auction design and strategy to governments and bidders in over 10 countries. He also has extensive experience in design and competition issues in wholesale electricity markets in the United States. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland and earned an M.A. in Economics and Finance and First Class Honor B.Eng. in Computer Engineering from Chulalongkorn University.

David Malec

Principal

David Malec is a Principal of Cramton Associates LLC and a research associate at the Economics Department of the University of Maryland. His research focuses on topics on the interface between the fields of computer science and economics, and how complex economic settings can be approached algorithmically. Of particular interest is how algorithmic techniques in approximation can be used to design near-optimal economic mechanisms in settings where exactly-optimal have proven elusive, and how such techniques can be adapted to take advantage of the types of information available in practical economic settings. His work has appeared in top conferences in algorithmic game theory and theoretical computer science. He received his B.A. in Computer Science and Mathematics from Lake Forest College in 1997, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2014.

Jason Dark

Principal

Jason Dark is a software engineer and mathematician. He received his MS in statistics from Georgetown University in 2011 and PhD in applied mathematics from the University of California, Merced in 2017. Jason has also spent a number of years working in government labs and tech startups. His primary focus during his PhD was interdisciplinary topics in mathematical biology, but has published in a wide range of fields including bioinformatics, linguistics, and cognitive science. Jason brings a unique blend of advanced mathematics knowledge with full-stack web application development skills to build and deliver compelling user experiences, most recently with real-time optimization capabilities and dynamic visualizations for auctions.

Simon Brandkamp

Principal

Simon is a Ph.D. student in Economics at the University of Cologne under the supervision of Peter Cramton and Axel Ockenfels. His research focuses on market design and behavioral economics with a particular interest in energy and electricity markets. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy & Economics from the University of Bayreuth and a Master’s degree in Economic Research from the University of Cologne. Simon also worked as a trainee in the energy market analysis team of McKinsey & Company and as an intern in the Norwegian renewable energy company Statkraft.

Chris Wilkens

Principal

Chris has designed auctions in industry for more than ten years. As a practitioner, he has designed, implemented, and analyzed auction marketplaces in areas ranging from ads to reinsurance. Chris holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an M.Eng. and a B.S. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Darrell Hoy

Principal

Darrell Hoy is a technologist, researcher and entrepreneur at the intersection of Computer Science and Economics, driven by designing, implementing and understanding auctions and markets in complicated, real world environments. Darrell holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Northwestern University and a B.A. in Computer Science and Math from Dartmouth College.