The Seattle Mariners are obsessed with the winner’s curse.
No, I’m not referring to a two-decade hangover following the best regular season in MLB history in 2001 — though I suppose that’s happened as well. Rather, I’m referring to a specific econ term that I vaguely remember learning about in a college class on game theory.
Imagine you’re participating in an auction; let’s say you’re bidding for a special kind of tale called a “Trevor” story. You’ve assigned a value to this story (perhaps $120), but you don’t know the value that other buyers have assigned to Trevor, which means you don’t know the true market value of Trevor.