Uniform Price Auction and Fixed Price Offerings in IPO: An Experimental Comparison

We compare the performances of uniform price auctions with fixed price offerings using laboratory experiments. In the uniform treatment, there is no evidence that the tacit collusion equilibrium has been achieved. On the contrary, subjects with higher expected value bid more aggressively. Their behaviour is close to an equilibrium derived where all players participate. The resulting market prices are significantly higher than the market value of a bidder with a low value signal. As a consequence, in our experiment uniform price auctions are superior to fixed price offerings in terms of revenue raising.