A number of papers in the theoretical auction literature show that the release of information regarding the seller’s valuation of an item can cause bidders to bid more aggressively. This widely accepted result in auction theory remains largely untested in the empirical literature. Recent...

This is an Invited paper for the World Congress of the Econometric Society held in Seattle in August 2000. We discuss the strong connections between auction theory and "standard" economic theory, and argue that auction-theoretic tools and intuitions can provide useful arguments and insights in a...

Edgeworth exchange is the fundamental general equilibrium model, yet equilibrium predications and theories of price adjustment for this model remain untested. This paper reports an experimental test of Edgeworth exchange which demonstrates that prices and allocations converge sharply to the...

In the standard model of a rent-seeking contest, firms optimally employ resources in an attempt to win the contest and obtain the rent. Typically, it is assumed that these resources may be hired at any desired level at some fixed, exogenous per-unit cost. In many real-world rent-seeking...

Auctions used to sell houses often attract a diverse group of bidders, with realtors and speculators out for a bargain competing against buyers with a real interest in the house. Value asymmetries such as these necessitate careful consideration of the auction format as revenue equivalence cannot...

We investigate differences in bidding behavior and participation patterns between simultaneous and multi-round auction formats held in the state of Oklahoma. Theory suggests there could be differential bidding effects arising from synergies and the release of relevant information across the two...

Suppose that the auctioneer begins at a maximum price, with every bidder knowing her own valuation of the object. Suppose that her valuation exceeds her expectation of the price. Then she might plan to bid more than some linear positive function of the valuation. Such a revision of the Vickrey...

Landberger et al. (2001) identified optimal bidder behavior in first- price private-value auctions when the ranking of valuations is common knowledge, and derived comparative-statics predictions regarding the auctioneer’s expected revenue and the efficiency of the allocation. The experiment...

We analyze first-price auctions with two asymmetric bidders, where the winner can offer the good for resale to the loser. One bidder has a private value for the good, the other bidder - the speculator - has zero value. We show that, independently of the resale market rules, the speculator's...

This paper considers a situation of two sellers of perfectly substitutable items competing in publicly announced reserve prices to induce potential bidders participation at their auction. After learning their own valuations and upon observing the reserve prices, potential bidders make a...