Information Impact and Allocation Rules in Auctions with Affiliated Private Values: A Laboratory Study.

In affiliated private value auctions, each bidder has perfect information regarding own value for the object at auction, but higher values of the item for one bid der make higher values for rivals more likely. The authors report on a series of experiments examining the following predictions: (1) in a first-price auction, public information about rivals valuations incr eases expected revenue, (2) an English auction institution increases expected revenue, (2) an English auction institution increases expect ed revenue compared to a first-price auction, and (3) a second-price auction is isomorphic to an English auction institution. Predictive a dequacy of several ad hoc bidding models are compared with Nash equil ibrium predictions. Copyright 1987 by The Econometric Society.