Fixed price plus rationing: an experiment

This paper explores, theoretically and experimentally, a fixed-price mechanism bywhich, if aggregate demand exceeds supply, bidders are proportionally rationed. Ifdemand is uncertain, equilibrium consists in overstating true demand to alleviate theeffects of being rationed. Overstating is more intense the lower the price, with bidsreaching their upper limit for sufficiently low prices. In the experiment, despite of asignificant proportion of equilibrium play, subjects tend to (under)overbid the equilibriumstrategy when rationing is (high) low, with only this latter effect being persistentover time. We explain the experimental evidence by a simple model in which theprobability of a deviation is decreasing in the expected loss associated with it.