Theoretically and experimentally, we generalize the analysis of acquiringa company (Samuelson and Bazerman 1985) by allowing for competition ofboth, buyers and sellers. Naivety of both is related to the idea that higherprices exclude worse qualities. While competition of naive buyers...

Collusive agreements are often observed in procurement auctions. They are probablymore easily achieved when competitors’ costs are easily estimated. If, however, the individualcosts of bidders are private information, effective ring formation is difficult to realize.We compare experimentally...

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.