IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/van/wpaper/0026.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public Versus Secret Reserve Prices in eBay Auctions: Results of Pok�mon Field Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Rama Katkar

    (Northwestern University)

  • David Lucking-Reiley

    (Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University)

Abstract

Sellers in eBay auctions have the opportunity to choose both a public minimum bid amount and a secret reserve price. We ask, empirically, whether the seller is made better or worse off by setting a secret reserve above a low minimum bid, versus the option of making the reserve public by using it as the minimum bid level. In a field experiment, we auction 50 matched pairs of Pok�mon cards on eBay, half with secret reserves and half with equivalently high public minimum bids. We find that secret reserve prices make us worse off as sellers, by reducing the probability of the auction resulting in a sale, deterring serious bidders from entering the auction, and lowering the expected transaction price of the auction.

Suggested Citation

  • Rama Katkar & David Lucking-Reiley, 2000. "Public Versus Secret Reserve Prices in eBay Auctions: Results of Pok�mon Field Experiment," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0026, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:van:wpaper:0026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/VUECON/vu00-w26.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2000
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hendricks, Kenneth & Porter, Robert H & Wilson, Charles A, 1994. "Auctions for Oil and Gas Leases with an Informed Bidder and a Random Reservation Price," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(6), pages 1415-1444, November.
    2. Ashenfelter, Orley, 1989. "How Auctions Work for Wine and Art," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 23-36, Summer.
    3. Glenn W. Harrison & John A. List, 2004. "Field Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1009-1055, December.
    4. David Lucking‐Reiley & Doug Bryan & Naghi Prasad & Daniel Reeves, 2007. "Pennies From Ebay: The Determinants Of Price In Online Auctions," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 223-233, June.
    5. Bajari, Patrick & Hortacsu, Ali, 2003. "The Winner's Curse, Reserve Prices, and Endogenous Entry: Empirical Insights from eBay Auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(2), pages 329-355, Summer.
    6. Alvin E. Roth & Axel Ockenfels, 2000. "Last Minute Bidding and the Rules for Ending Second-Price Auctions: Theory and Evidence from a Natural Experiment on the Internet," NBER Working Papers 7729, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. David Lucking-Reiley, 1999. "Using Field Experiments to Test Equivalence between Auction Formats: Magic on the Internet," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1063-1080, December.
    8. Rafael Tenorio & Robert F. Easley, 1999. "Bidding Strategies in Internet Yankee Auctions: Theory and Evidence," Computing in Economics and Finance 1999 1021, Society for Computational Economics.
    9. Robert F. Easley & Rafael Tenorio, 1999. "Bidding Strategies in Internet Yankee Auctions," Microeconomics 9907001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Vincent Daniel R., 1995. "Bidding Off the Wall: Why Reserve Prices May Be Kept Secret," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 575-584, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Anderson, Steve & Friedman, Daniel & Milam, Garrett & Singh, Nirvikar, 2004. "Buy it Now: A Hybrid Internet Market Institution," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt21d715v9, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    2. Jennifer Brown & John Morgan, 2009. "How Much Is a Dollar Worth? Tipping versus Equilibrium Coexistence on Competing Online Auction Sites," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(4), pages 668-700, August.
    3. Patrick Bajari & Ali Hortaçsu, 2004. "Economic Insights from Internet Auctions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(2), pages 457-486, June.
    4. A T Brint, 2003. "Investigating buyer and seller strategies in online auctions," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 54(11), pages 1177-1188, November.
    5. Durham Yvonne & Roelofs Matthew R & Standifird Stephen S, 2004. "eBay's Buy-It-Now Function: Who, When, and How," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-24, October.
    6. Diego Moreno & John Wooders, 2011. "Auctions with heterogeneous entry costs," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 42(2), pages 313-336, June.
    7. Tanjim Hossain & John Morgan, 2005. "A test of the revenue equivalence theorem using field experiments on ebay," Natural Field Experiments 00269, The Field Experiments Website.
    8. Paul Resnick & Richard Zeckhauser & John Swanson & Kate Lockwood, 2006. "The value of reputation on eBay: A controlled experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(2), pages 79-101, June.
    9. Ming Zhou & William Y. Jiang & Menglin Cao, 2012. "Pricing In Online Auction Procurement A Review Of Empirical Methods And Current Understandings," International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management (IJITM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(03), pages 1-17.
    10. Ku, Gillian & Malhotra, Deepak & Murnighan, J. Keith, 2005. "Towards a competitive arousal model of decision-making: A study of auction fever in live and Internet auctions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 89-103, March.
    11. Patrick Bajari & Ali Hortacsu, 2002. "Cyberspace Auctions and Pricing Issues: A Review of Empirical Findings," Working Papers 02005, Stanford University, Department of Economics.
    12. Patrick Bajari & Ali Hortacsu, 2003. "Economic Insights from Internet Auctions: A Survey," NBER Working Papers 10076, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Katkar Rama & Reiley David H, 2007. "Public versus Secret Reserve Prices in eBay Auctions: Results from a Pokémon Field Experiment," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 6(2), pages 1-25, January.
    2. Axel Ockenfels & David Reiley & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2006. "Online Auctions," NBER Working Papers 12785, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Gerard Marty & Raphaele Preget, 2007. "A Socio-economic Analysis of French Public Timber Sales," Working Papers - Cahiers du LEF 2007-03, Laboratoire d'Economie Forestiere, AgroParisTech-INRA.
    4. Paul Resnick & Richard Zeckhauser & John Swanson & Kate Lockwood, 2006. "The value of reputation on eBay: A controlled experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(2), pages 79-101, June.
    5. David Grether & David Porter & Matthew Shum, 2011. "Intimidation or Impatience? Jump Bidding in On-line Ascending Automobile Auctions," Working Papers 11-07, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    6. Lu Ji & Tong Li, 2008. "Multi-round procurement auctions with secret reserve prices: theory and evidence," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(7), pages 897-923.
    7. Patrick Bajari & Ali Hortaçsu, 2004. "Economic Insights from Internet Auctions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(2), pages 457-486, June.
    8. Stephanie Rosenkranz & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2007. "Reserve Prices in Auctions as Reference Points," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(520), pages 637-653, April.
    9. 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.
    10. Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch & Marco Pagnozzi & Antonio Rosato, 2021. "Projection of Private Values in Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(10), pages 3256-3298, October.
    11. Bolton, Gary E. & Ockenfels, Axel, 2014. "Does laboratory trading mirror behavior in real world markets? Fair bargaining and competitive bidding on eBay," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 143-154.
    12. Liran Einav & Theresa Kuchler & Jonathan Levin & Neel Sundaresan, 2015. "Assessing Sale Strategies in Online Markets Using Matched Listings," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 215-247, May.
    13. Han, Jidong & Popkowski Leszczyc, Peter T.L. & Zhang, Zelin, 2021. "Empirical Analyses of Nonlinear Effects of Reserve Prices on Ending Prices in Online Auctions," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 86-102.
    14. Xinyan Shi, 2013. "Common-value auctions with asymmetrically informed bidders and reserve price," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 9(2), pages 161-175, June.
    15. David Grether & David Porter & Matthew Shum, 2015. "Cyber-Shilling in Automobile Auctions: Evidence from a Field Experiment," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 85-103, August.
    16. Michael Scholz & Markus Franz & Oliver Hinz, 2016. "The Ambiguous Identifier Clustering Technique," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 26(2), pages 143-156, May.
    17. Anwar, Sajid & McMillan, Robert & Zheng, Mingli, 2006. "Bidding behavior in competing auctions: Evidence from eBay," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 307-322, February.
    18. Nicola Lacetera & Bradley J. Larsen & Devin G. Pope & Justin R. Sydnor, 2016. "Bid Takers or Market Makers? The Effect of Auctioneers on Auction Outcome," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 195-229, November.
    19. Jason Kuruzovich & Siva Viswanathan & Ritu Agarwal, 2010. "Seller Search and Market Outcomes in Online Auctions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(10), pages 1702-1717, October.
    20. Kevin Hasker & Robin Sickles, 2010. "eBay in the Economic Literature: Analysis of an Auction Marketplace," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 37(1), pages 3-42, August.

    More about this item

    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:van:wpaper:0026. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/econ/wparchive/index.html .

    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.