At equilibrium with respect to bids, entry and information acquisition, oral auctions can generate significantly more revenue than sealed-bid auctions even in the case of independently-distributed privately-known values.  2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: D44 (auctions)

We compare multi-object English-type ascending price auctions with first price sealed bid auctions in private values environments with multi-object demands. Special attention is paid to the effect of closing rules on ascending auctions’ outcomes. JEL classification code: C92, D44

In this study, we investigate the formation of bidder’s willingness to pay (WTP) in sequential online auctions. Our findings contribute to the literature of online auctions in the following ways. First, we detect and empirically measure in a real world scenario the WTP updating phenomenon mentioned by Engelbrecht-Wiggans (2000). By considering the environment of multiple sequential auctions of ...

This paper argues that the answers to interesting questions about real auctions depend, often critically, on the particular mathematical assumptions that go into a model of an auction situation. It then suggests some understudied areas for fruitful mathematical research on competitive bidding. These include asymmetry, financially constrained bidders, complicated information structures, bidder d...

Auctions are important market mechanisms for the allocation of goods and services. Auctions are preferred often to other common processes because they are open, quite fair, easiness to understand by participants, and lead to economically efficient outcomes. Design of auctions is a multidisciplinary effort made of contributions from economics, operations research, informatics, and other discipli...

In this paper we explore and analyze the structure of Internet auctions from an analytical and an empirical perspective. Such web-based auctions are rapidly emerging as a mercantile process of choice in the electronic marketplace. We observe current Internet auctions for one-time products, such as rapidly aging hardware, and analyze them within the framework of the existing auction theory. Whil...

Online auctions are arguably one of the most important and distinctly new applications of the Internet. The predominant player in online auctions, eBay, has over 42 million users, and it was the host of over $9.3 billion worth of goods sold just in the year 2001. Using methods from approximate dynamic programming and integer programming, we design algorithms for optimally bidding for a single i...

We present a model of repeated, ascending price auctions for homogeneous goods with unobserved, stochastic entry. Bidders have unit demands; they exit if they win, and bid again if they lose. We show that, in equilibrium, entrants always bid in the next-toclose auction and bidders always bid at the last minute. The more bidders present, the lower is the continuation value of future auctions, so...

We study auctions where bidders have independent private values but attach a disutility to the surplus of rivals, and derive symmetric equilibria for first-price, second-price, English, and Dutch auctions. We find that equilibrium bidding is more aggressive than standard predictions. Indeed, in second-price auctions it is optimal to bid above one’s valuation; that is, bidding “frenzies” can ari...

When autonomous agents decide on their bidding strategies in real world auctions, they have a number of concerns that go beyond the models that are normally analyzed in traditional auction theory. Oftentimes, the agents have budget constraints and the auctions have a reserve price, both of which restrict the bids the agents can place. In addition, their attitude need not be risk-neutral and the...