Does Anticipated Regret Really Matter? Revisiting the Role of Feedback in Auction Bidding

Does the type of post-auction feedback affect bidding behavior in first price auctions? Filiz- Ozbay and Ozbay (2007) find that such manipulation can increase bids in a one-shot auction. They explain this as an effect of anticipated regret combined with the assumption that feedback directly affects salience of regret relative to material payoff. We revisit this important market design issue using four different auction protocols and a large sample of subjects. We do not find any systematic effect of feedback on the average bid/value ratio. This evidence indicates either the lack of anticipated regret or its manipulability by feedback in one-shot auctions.