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Behavior in Second-Price Auctions by Highly Experienced eBay Buyers and Sellers

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Author Info
Rod Garratt (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Mark Walker (University of Arizona, Tucson)
John Wooders (University of Arizona, Tucson)

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Abstract

When second-price auctions have been conducted in the laboratory, most of the observed bids have been "overbids" (bids that exceed the bidder's value) and there are very few underbids. Few if any of the subjects in those experiments had any prior experience bidding in auctions. We report on sealed-bid second-price auctions that we conducted on the Internet using subjects with substantial prior experience: they were highly experienced participants in eBay auctions. Unlike the novice bidders in previous (laboratory) experiments, the experienced bidders exhibited no greater tendency to overbid than to underbid. However, even subjects with substantial prior experience tend not to bid their values, suggesting that the non-optimal bidding of novice subjects is robust to substantial experience in non-experimental auctions. A key determinant of bidding behavior was whether a subject had ever been a seller on eBay.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara in its series University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series with number 04-04.

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Date of creation: 29 Mar 2004
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Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsbec:04-04

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Related research
Keywords: auctions; overbidding; eBay; experienced bidders; buyers; sellers;

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

  1. Alvin E. Roth & Axel Ockenfels, 2002. "Last-Minute Bidding and the Rules for Ending Second-Price Auctions: Evidence from eBay and Amazon Auctions on the Internet," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1093-1103, September. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Ronald Harstad, 2000. "Dominant Strategy Adoption and Bidders' Experience with Pricing Rules," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 261-280, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Kagel, John H & Harstad, Ronald M & Levin, Dan, 1987. "Information Impact and Allocation Rules in Auctions with Affiliated Private Values: A Laboratory Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(6), pages 1275-1304, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. John A. List, 2003. "Does Market Experience Eliminate Market Anomalies?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 118(1), pages 41-71, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Young Han Lee & Ulrike Malmendier, 2007. "The Bidder's Curse," NBER Working Papers 13699, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2007. "Choice Over Time," IZA Discussion Papers 2993, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
    • Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2007. "Choice over Time," Working Papers 605, Queen Mary, University of London, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  3. Timothy N. Cason & Tatsuyoshi Saijo & Tomas Sjostrom & Takehiko Yamato, 2005. "Secure Implementation Experiments: Do Strategy-proof Mechanisms Really Work?," Economics Working Papers 0055, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Kirchkamp, Oliver & Reiss, J. Philipp & Sadrieh, Abdolkarim, 2008. "A pure variation of risk in private-value auctions," Research Memoranda 050, Maastricht : METEOR, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization. [Downloadable!]
  5. Daniel McFadden, 2009. "The human side of mechanism design: a tribute to Leo Hurwicz and Jean-Jacque Laffont," Review of Economic Design, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 77-100, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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