in the fiscal years 1998 and 1999, the 1-year bill was eliminated. Exhibit 3.1 contains an announcement dated March 11, 2002, of an offering of 4-week bills. The first 4-week bill issue was auctioned on July 31, 2001.   EXHIBIT 3.1 Treasury Auction of a 4-Week Bill a. Announcement of a 4-Week Bill Auction     b. Highlights of Treasury Offering of 4-Week Bills to be Issued March 14, 2002       Source: U.S. Treasury   Determination of the Results of an Auction Currently, Treasury bills (and indeed all marketable Treasury securities) are sold in auctions and these auctions are conducted on the basis of     yield. For bills, the yields are on a bank discount basis. Noncompetitive bids can be submitted from the public for up to $1 million face amount of Treasury bills. These noncompetitive tenders, along with any non- public purchases (e.g., purchases by the Federal Reserve) are subtracted from the total securities being auctioned. The remainder is the amount to be awarded to the competitive bidders. The Treasury employs a single-price auction for all marketable secu- rities it issues and has discontinued the use of multiple-price auctions. In a multiple price auction, competitive bidders (e.g., primary dealers) state the amount of the securities desired and the yields they are willing to accept.4The yields are then ranked from lowest to highest. This is equivalent to arranging the bids from the highest price to the lowest price. Starting from the lowest yield bid, all competitive bids are accepted until the amount to be distributed to the competitive bidders is completely allocated. The highest yield accepted by the Treasury is called the "stop yield" and bidders at that yield are awarded a percent- age of their total tender offer. The single-price auction proceeds in the same fashion except that all accepted bids are filled at the highest yield of accepted competitive tenders (i.e., the stop yield). The Treasury moved to single-price auctions for all Treasury securi- ties in 1998 after conducting single-price auctions for monthly sales of 2- and 5-year notes since September 1992. Paul Malvey and Christine Archibald conducted a study of the relative performance of the two auc- tion mechanisms.5Their empirical results suggest that single-price auc- tions broaden participation and accordingly reduce concentration of securities at issuance. Moreover, they also present somewhat weaker