We test whether markets are needed to mitigate the effects of anchoring on peoples' pref- erences. We anchor subjects by asking them if they are willing to sell a bottle of wine for a transparently uninformative random price. We elicit subjects' Willingness-To-Accept for the bottle before and...

Multi-license ascending auctions have been criticized because they allow bidders to reduce their demand and split the market at low prices. At the same time, it has been argued that the ascending auction is a suitable format for a seller who wants to exploit preemptive motives. Incumbent firms...

Auctions are generally not efficient when the object's expected value depends on private and common value information. We report a series of first-price auction experiments to measure the degree of inefficiency that occurs with financially motivated bidders. While some subjects fall prey to the...

Multi-unit ascending auctions allow for equilibria in which bidders strategically reduce their demand and split the market at low prices. At the same time, they allow for preemptive bidding by incumbent bidders in a coordinated attempt to exclude entrants from the market. We consider an...

We test whether anchoring affects people's elicited valuations for a bottle of wine in individual decision making and in markets. We anchor subjects by asking them if they are willing to sell a bottle of wine for a transparently uninformative random price. We elicit subjects'...

We investigate the possibility of enhancing efficiency by awarding premiums to a set of highest bidders in an English auction— in a setting that extends Maskin and Riley (1984, <I>Econometrica</I> 52: 1473-1518) in three aspects: (i) the seller can be risk averse, (ii) the bidders can have...</i>

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in <I>Experimental Economics</I> 2013, 16(1), 52-87.<P> Multi-unit ascending auctions allow for equilibria in which bidders strategically reduce their demand and split the market at low prices. At the same time, they allow for preemptive bidding by incumbent...</p></i>