Through a series of decision tasks involving colored cards, we provide separate measures of Bayesian updating and non-probabilistic reasoning skills. We apply these measures to (and are the first to study) a common-value Dutch auction. This format is more salient than the strategically...

Through a series of decision tasks involving colored cards, we provide separate measures of Bayesian updating and non-probabilistic reasoning skills. We apply these measures to (and are the first to study) a common-value Dutch auction. This format is more salient than the strategically...

We investigate equilibrium bidding behavior of bidders with reference-dependent preferences and independent private values in single-unit English and Dutch clock auctions. Bidders' reference points are endogenous and determined by their strategy and their beliefs about the other bidders. In...

Auctions are a popular and prevalent form of trading mechanism, despite the restriction that the seller cannot price-discriminate among potential buyers. To understand why this is the case, we consider an auction-like environment in which a seller with an indivisible object negotiates with two...

Certain type of perfect information games (PI-games), the so-called Banach-Mazur games, so far have not been applied in economy. The perfect information positional game is defined as the game during which at any time the choice is made by one of the players who is acquainted with the previous...

Works of art and culture are sold by many means. These include transactions between dealers and their customers, auctions with open outcry, and even, occasionally, sealed bid auctions. However, the standard procedure for establishing art valuations is most commonly the English auction, where...

In this paper we analyze the Ancona wholesale fish market (MERITAN) where transactions take place in three simultaneous Dutch auctions. Our objective is to characterize the behavior of market participants and, in particular, buyers in such a market structure. Our analysis of the data shows that...

We consider the problem of a monopolist who must sell her inventory before some deadline, facing n buyers with independent private values. The monopolist posts prices but has no commitment power. The seller faces a basic trade-off between imperfect price discrimination and maintaining an...

We construct a dataset for every U.S. Treasury auction from 2003 to 2012. We find that market factors known before the auction -- FedFunds rate, S&P, VIX -- are all significant for the auction high-yield, but the relationships differ before vs. during QE and between Bond and Bills auctions....

We analyze the bidding behavior in a strictly descending multi-unit auction where the price decreases continuously without going back to the initial start price once an object is sold. We prove that any equilibrium in the multi-unit descending auction is inefficient. We derive a symmetric...

We compare the effects of information acquisition during a descending auction with its static counterpart, the first-price sealed-bid auction. In a framework with heterogeneous prior information, we show that an equilibrium with information acquisition exists in both auction formats. We show...

In this paper we analyze the Ancona wholesale fish market (MERITAN) where transactions take place in three simultaneous Dutch auctions. Our objective is to characterize the behavior of market participants and, in particular, that of buyers in such a market structure. Our analysis shows that...

In this paper, we perform an empirical investigation to detect if and how agents’ behavior changes with the amount of available information they have. To this aim, we use data from two wholesale fish markets of different thicknesses. We tackle the issue by investigating features such as the...

Since 2007, three actors have been particularly important in U.S. Treasury auctions: The U.S. government, issuing $8.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities in 2010 alone; foreign official entities, purchasing $398 billion in U.S. Treasury securities in 2010 alone; and finally the Federal Reserve,...

This book develops a structured methodology that allows to systematically analyze emotions in auctions. It provides a unified framework for emotional bidding in auctions, which comprises the bidders' processes of cognitive reasoning and emotional processing, and a methodology for measuring...

This paper reviews equilibrium behaviour in different auction mechanisms. We will deal with two types of open auctions, English and Dutch, and two types of sealed-bid auctions, first-price and second-price, when there is a single object for sale and bidders have private values. We show that...

If bidders can acquire information during the auction the descending auction is no longer equivalent to a first-price-sealed-bid auction. Revenue equivalence does not hold. The incentive to acquire information can even be larger in a descending auction than in an ascending auction.

Theorists have long believed that Dutch auctions are strategically equivalent to standard sealed bidding. However, in recent controlled experiments with actual Dutch and sealed-bid Internet auctions of collectibles, the Dutch auctions produced significantly more revenue. We believe that this...

This paper provides an economic framework within which to consider the effectiveness and limitations of auction markets. The paper looks at the use of auctions as a policy instrument and the effects of auction design on consumer interests, the efficient allocation of resources, and industry...