This paper contains a new review of the research of the last decade that has been designed to shed light on how the art auction system works, what it indicates about price formation, and how well it performs. We begin with a short description of the mechanics of the auction system and then...

Market microstructure deals with the purest form of financial intermediation – the trading of a financial asset, such as a stock or a bond. In a trading market, assets are not transformed but are simply transferred from one investor to another. The field of market microstructure studies the...

We investigate how risk aversion (RA) shapes the informative content of prices in an experimental asset market, where traders are sorted according to their RA. RA should induce steeper individual demands and, under its most common parametrizations, drive equilibrium prices closer to revealing...

We report results from experimental first-price, sealed-bid, all-pay auctions for a good with a common and known value. We observe bidding strategies in groups of two and three bidders and under two extreme information conditions. As predicted by the Nash equilibrium, subjects use mixed...

The paper presents a complete information model of bidding in second price sealed-bid and ascending-bid (English) auctions, in which potential buyers know the unit valuation of other bidders and may spitefully prefer that their rivals earn a lower surplus. Bidders with spiteful preferences...

In an experimental study, we compare individual willingness to cooperate in a public good game after an initial team contest phase. While players in the treatment setup make a conscious decision on how much to invest in the contest, this decision is exogenously imposed on players in the control...

We present an experimental test of a procedurally fair co-determination mechanism where group members reduce their value uncertainty before submitting bids for a joint project. The results suggest a relatively efficient mechanism, with unprofitable projects being largely rejected and profitable...