BIDDING STRATEGIES OF SEQUENTIAL FIRST PRICE AUCTIONS PROGRAMMED BY EXPERIENCED BIDDERS

This paper considers bidding automata programmed by experienced subjects in sequential first price sealed bid auction experiments. These automata play against each other in computer tournaments. The risk neutral subgame perfect Nash equilibrium strategy of the independent private value model serves as a benchmark. The equilibrium strategy does not describe any of the heterogeneous automata programs submitted by subjects and does not always perform better than average in the tournament.