Learning through Simultaneous Play: Evidence from Penny Auctions

The Economics of Penny Auctions

Selling a dollar for more than a dollar? Evidence from online penny auctions

Online penny auctions, emerged recently, are seen as an adaptation of the famous dollar auction and as “the evil stepchild of game theory and behavioral economics.”We use the complete bid and bidder history at such a website to study if penny auctions can sustain excessive profits over time. The website we study is characterized by a revolving door of new bidders who lose money. A very small pe...

An Empirical Study of Online Penny Auctions

We investigate why QuiBids has survived a string of bankruptcies and closings of penny auction sites over the past two years. We find that although inherently profitable on an auction by auction basis, penny auction sites have problems retaining users. In order to alleviate this problem, many sites implemented a Buy-Now system, where bidders could contribute money already lost in an auction tow...

Optimal Auctions through Deep Learning

Designing an auction that maximizes expected revenue is an intricate task. Despite major efforts, only the single-item case is fully understood (Myerson, 1981). In this work, we initiate the exploration of the use of tools from deep learning for the automated design of optimal auctions. The design objective is revenue optimal, dominant-strategy incentive compatible auctions. We show that multi-...

Game-Based Learning for Learning to Program: From Learning Through Play to Learning Through Game Development

This research is approaching game-based learning as a creative act. Furthermore, creativity receives a holistic interpretation and is regarded as a three-dimensional term. Consequently, the authors will debate the research topic of game-based learning from three perspectives: teacher, student and learning process. On the other hand, computer programming is still hard to learn; as many researche...