IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-11-00254.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bidding behaviours in ebay auctions: secret reservation price and endogenous entry

Author

Listed:
  • Feng Jiao

    (McGill University)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the secret reservation price in eBay auctions. Under the assumptions of secret and public reservation price, we derive the optimal bidding function for the bidders. For the seller, we solve for the equilibrium reservation price. We argue that the choice of secret reservation price is rational for the seller, as they can generate higher revenue in certain conditions. Our model predicts that, under endogenous entry, secret reservation price leads to higher revenue since it attracts more bidders to the auction. This effect is more noticeable for luxury goods. However, secret and public reservation prices generate identical revenue for the seller if entry is exogenous. Furthermore, the results are supported by empirical works such as Elyakime et al.(1997), Bajari(2002) and Lucking-Reiley et al.(2006).

Suggested Citation

  • Feng Jiao, 2011. "Bidding behaviours in ebay auctions: secret reservation price and endogenous entry," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(2), pages 1-21.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-11-00254
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2011/Volume31/EB-11-V31-I2-A21.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brisset, Karine & Cochard, François & Le Gallo, Julie, 2015. "Secret versus public reserve price in an “outcry” English procurement auction: Experimental results," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 285-298.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    secret reservation price; Endogenous Entry; auctions; internet economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-11-00254. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.