We examine learning behaviour in auction and fair division experiments with independent private values under two different price rules, first and second price. Participants play all four games repeatedly and submit complete bid functions rather than single bids. This allows us to study how...

Empirical studies in family economics usually rely on questionnaires, statistical data or panel data. Here we try to study experimentally some crucial aspects of engaging in a marriage. The female partner can end the relationship or suggest one of two forms of joint venture where more labor...

This study examines bidder preferences between alternative auction institutions. We seek to characterize experimentally the degree to which bidders prefer an ascending auction to a sealed bid auction. We find very strong ceteris paribus preferences for the ascending institution with bidders...

"In previous work, we found that bidders strongly prefer the ascending to the first-price sealed-bid auction on a ceteris paribus basis, but perhaps surprisingly, they are not willing to pay up to an entry price for the ascending auction that would equalize the profits. Risk aversion was...

Are commonly known beliefs essential for bidding behavior in asymmetric auctions? Our experimental results suggest that not informing participants how values are randomly generated does not change behavior much and may even make it appear more rational.

We run an experiment where 97 subjects could retrieve records of completed past auctions before placing their bids in current one-bid, two-bid, and auction-selection games. Each subject was asked to participate in 3 current auctions; but could retrieve up to 60 records of completed (past)...

The conventional wisdom in the auction design literature is that first price sealed bid auctions tend to make more money while ascending auctions tend to be more efficient. We re-examine these issues in an environment in which bidders are allowed to endogenously choose in which auction format to...

Ivanova-Stenzel and Salmon (2004a) established some interesting yet puzzling results regarding bidders’ preferences between auction formats. The finding is that bidders strongly prefer the ascending to the first price sealed bid auction on a ceteris paribus basis but they are not willing...

In this paper we introduce a new type of experiment that combines the advantages of lab and field experiments. The experiment is conducted in the lab but using an unchanged market environment from the real world. Moreover, a subset of the standard subject pool is used, containing those subjects...

This paper analyzes the trade of an indivisible good within a two-stage mechanism, where a seller first negotiates with one potential buyer about the price of the good. If the negotiation fails to produce a sale, a second–price sealed–bid auction with an additional buyer is...