There is a great deal of late bidding on internet second price auctions. We show that this need not result from either … have a fixed end time. A natural experiment is available because the auctions on Amazon, while operating under otherwise … passed without a bid. The strategic differences in the auction rules are reflected in the auction data by significantly more …

In second price internet auctions with a fixed end time, such as those on eBay, many bidders 'snipe', i.e., they submit … their bids in the closing minutes or seconds of an auction. Late bids of this sort are much less frequent in auctions that … second price internet auctions, in which very late bids have a positive probability of not being successfully submitted, and …