Title

A random nth-price auction

Authors

Authors

J. F. Shogren; M. Margolis; C. Koo;J. A. List

Abbreviated Journal Title

J. Econ. Behav. Organ.

Keywords

auctions; demand revelation; experimental valuation; WILLINGNESS; ACCEPT; PAY; VALUES; TESTS; Economics

Abstract

Second-price auctions are designed to induce people to reveal their private preferences for a good. Laboratory evidence suggests that while these auctions do a reasonable job on aggregate, they fall short at the individual level, especially for bidders who are off-margin of the market-clearing price. Herein we introduce and explore whether a random nth-price auction can engage. all bidders to bid sincerely. Our results first show that the random nth-price auction can induce sincere bidding in theory and practice. We then compare the random nth-price to the second-price auction. We find that the second-price auction works better on-margin, and the random nth-price auction works better off-margin. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Journal Title

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Volume

46

Issue/Number

4

Publication Date

1-1-2001

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

409

Last Page

421

WOS Identifier

WOS:000171744200004

ISSN

0167-2681

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