In an experiment using two-bidder first-price sealed bid auctions with symmetric independent private values and 400 subjects, we scan also the right hand of each subject. We study how the ratio of the length of the index and ring fingers (2D:4D) of the right hand, a measure of prenatal hormone...

We correlate competitive bidding and profits in symmetric independent private value first-price auctions with salivary testosterone, estradiol, progesterone, and cortisol in more than 200 subjects. Females bid significantly higher and earn significantly lower profits than males. Moreover,...

Although one may hope to achieve equality of stated profits without enforcing it, one may not trust in such voluntary equality seeking and rather try to impose rules (of bidding) guaranteeing it. Our axiomatic approach is based on envy-free net trades according to bids which, together with the...

The objects for sale in most auctions possess both private and common value elements. This salient feature has not yet been incorporated into a strategic analysis of equilibrium bidding behaviour. This paper reports such an analysis for a stylised model in which bidders receive a private value...

This paper presents a unified framework for characterizing symmetric equilibrium in simultaneous move, two-player, rank-order contests with complete information, in which each player's strategy generates direct or indirect affine spillover effects that depend on the rank-order of her decision...

Unique-lowest sealed-bid auctions are auctions in which participation is endogenous and the winning bid is the lowest bid among all unique bids. Such auctions admit very many Nash equilibria (NEs) in pure and mixed strategies. The two-bidders' auction is similar to the Hawk-Dove game, which...

Recent research suggests that auction winners sometimes fall prey to a "bidder's curse", paying more for an item at auction than they would have paid at a posted price. One explanation for this phenomenon is that bidders are inattentive to posted prices. We develop a model in which bidders'...

Anchoring is one of the most studied and robust behavioral biases, but there is little knowledge about its persistence in strategic settings. This article studies the role of anchoring bias in private-value auctions. We test experimentally two different anchor types. The announcement of a random...

We study when equilibrium prices can aggregate information in an auction market with a large population of traders. Our main result identifies a property of information---the betweenness property---that is both necessary and sufficient for information aggregation. The characterization provides...

We address the issue of bidder ring formation in single and multi-unit Vickrey auctions. We address this issue in a bargaining game set up under the assumption that valuation of bidders is commonly known only amongst themselves. In the single unit case, we show that the equilibrium coalition...