It is common for auctions to feature reserve prices that are kept secret. In auctions with independent private values, there is no clear theoretical explanation for why the reserve price should be disclosed publicly or kept secret. Therefore, we conducted laboratory experiments to investigate...

Recent research suggests that auction winners sometimes fall prey to a "bidder's curse", paying more for an item at auction than they would have paid at a posted price. One explanation for this phenomenon is that bidders are inattentive to posted prices. We develop a model in which bidders'...

We report an experiment conducted to gain insight into factors that may affect revenues in English auctions and lotteries, two commonly used charity fund-raising formats. In particular, we examine how changes in the marginal per capita return (MPCR) from the public component of bidding, and how...