Ivanova-Stenzel and Salmon (2004a) established some interesting yet puzzling results regarding bidders’ preferences between auction formats. The finding is that bidders strongly prefer the ascending to the first price sealed bid auction on a ceteris paribus basis but they are not willing...

Most prior theoretical and experimental work involving auction choice has assumed bidders only find out their value after making a choice of which autcion to enter. In this paper we examine whether or not subjects knowing their value prior to making an auction choice impacts their choice...

This study examines bidder preferences between alternative auction institutions. We seek to experimentally characterize the degree to which bidders prefer an ascending auction to a sealed bid auction. We find very strong ceteris paribus preferences for the ascending institution with bidders...

"In previous work, we found that bidders strongly prefer the ascending to the first-price sealed-bid auction on a ceteris paribus basis, but perhaps surprisingly, they are not willing to pay up to an entry price for the ascending auction that would equalize the profits. Risk aversion was...

The conventional wisdom in the auction design literature is that first price sealed bid auctions tend to make more money while ascending auctions tend to be more efficient. We re-examine these issues in an environment in which bidders are allowed to endogenously choose in which auction format to...