IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jogath/v48y2019i4d10.1007_s00182-019-00678-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Heterogeneous bids in auctions with rational and boundedly rational bidders: theory and experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Oliver Kirchkamp

    (Universität Jena)

  • J. Philipp Reiß

    (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT))

Abstract

We present results from a series of experiments that allow us to measure overbidding and, in particular, underbidding in first-price auctions. We investigate the extent to which the amount of underbidding depends on the seemingly innocuous parameters of the experimental setup. To structure our data, we present and test a theory that introduces constant markdown bidders into a population of fully rational bidders. While a fraction of bidders in the experiment can be described by Bayesian Nash equilibrium bids, a larger fraction seems either to use constant markdown bids or to rationally optimise against a population with fully rational and boundedly rational markdown bidders.

Suggested Citation

  • Oliver Kirchkamp & J. Philipp Reiß, 2019. "Heterogeneous bids in auctions with rational and boundedly rational bidders: theory and experiment," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(4), pages 1001-1031, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jogath:v:48:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s00182-019-00678-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s00182-019-00678-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00182-019-00678-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00182-019-00678-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cox, James C & Smith, Vernon L & Walker, James M, 1985. "Experimental Development of Sealed-Bid Auction Theory: Calibrating Controls for Risk Aversion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 160-165, May.
    2. Hong, Han & Shum, Matthew, 2003. "Econometric models of asymmetric ascending auctions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 327-358, February.
    3. Kagel, John H & Levin, Dan, 1993. "Independent Private Value Auctions: Bidder Behaviour in First-, Second- and Third-Price Auctions with Varying Numbers of Bidders," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(419), pages 868-879, July.
    4. Masiliunas, Aidas & Mengel, Friederike & Reiss, J. Philipp, 2014. "Behavioral variation in Tullock contests," Working Paper Series in Economics 55, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    5. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    6. Vincent P. Crawford & Nagore Iriberri, 2007. "Level-k Auctions: Can a Nonequilibrium Model of Strategic Thinking Explain the Winner's Curse and Overbidding in Private-Value Auctions?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(6), pages 1721-1770, November.
    7. Jeremy T. Fox & Patrick Bajari, 2013. "Measuring the Efficiency of an FCC Spectrum Auction," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 100-146, February.
    8. Chen, Kay-Yut & Plott, Charles R., 1998. "Nonlinear Behavior in Sealed Bid First Price Auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 34-78, October.
    9. Werner G¸th & Radosveta Ivanova-Stenzel & Manfred K–nigstein & Martin Strobel, 2003. "Learning to bid - an experimental study of bid function adjustments in auctions and fair division games," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(487), pages 477-494, April.
    10. Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta & Sonsino, Doron, 2004. "Comparative study of one-bid versus two-bid auctions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 561-583, August.
    11. Francesco Decarolis, 2018. "Comparing Public Procurement Auctions," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 59(2), pages 391-419, May.
    12. Rodney Garratt & Mark Walker & John Wooders, 2012. "Behavior in second-price auctions by highly experienced eBay buyers and sellers," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(1), pages 44-57, March.
    13. Kagel, John H & Harstad, Ronald M & Levin, Dan, 1987. "Information Impact and Allocation Rules in Auctions with Affiliated Private Values: A Laboratory Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(6), pages 1275-1304, November.
    14. Blume, Andreas & Gneezy, Uri, 2010. "Cognitive forward induction and coordination without common knowledge: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 488-511, March.
    15. Oliver Kirchkamp & J. Philipp Reiß, 2011. "Out‐Of‐Equilibrium Bids in First‐Price Auctions: Wrong Expectations or Wrong Bids," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(557), pages 1361-1397, December.
    16. Cox, James C. & Smith, Vernon L. & Walker, James M., 1983. "Tests of a heterogeneous bidders theory of first price auctions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 12(3-4), pages 207-212.
    17. Cox, James C & Smith, Vernon L & Walker, James M, 1988. "Theory and Individual Behavior of First-Price Auctions," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 61-99, March.
    18. Kirchkamp, Oliver & Poen, Eva & Rei, J. Philipp, 2009. "Outside options: Another reason to choose the first-price auction," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 153-169, February.
    19. Ali Hortaçsu & David McAdams, 2018. "Empirical Work on Auctions of Multiple Objects," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(1), pages 157-184, March.
    20. Douglas Dyer & John H. Kagel & Dan Levin, 1989. "Resolving Uncertainty about the Number of Bidders in Independent Private-Value Auctions: An Experimental Analysis," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 20(2), pages 268-279, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ziyi Tan & Shulin Liu, 2022. "The Generalized First- and Second-Price Auctions: Overbidding, Underbidding, and Optimal Reserve Price," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-15, January.
    2. Yves Breitmoser & Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, 2022. "Obviousness around the clock," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 483-513, April.
    3. Kirchkamp, Oliver & Oechssler, Joerg & Sofianos, Andis, 2021. "The Binary Lottery Procedure does not induce risk neutrality in the Holt & Laury and Eckel & Grossman tasks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 348-369.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kirchkamp, O. & Reiss, J.P. & Sadrieh, A., 2008. "A pure variation of risk in private-value auctions," Research Memorandum 050, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    2. Sascha Füllbrunn & Tibor Neugebauer, 2013. "Varying the number of bidders in the first-price sealed-bid auction: experimental evidence for the one-shot game," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(3), pages 421-447, September.
    3. Tibor Neugebauer, 2007. "Bid and price effects of increased competition in the first-price auction: experimental evidence," LSF Research Working Paper Series 07-17, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    4. Grundl, Serafin & Zhu, Yu, 2023. "Robust inference in first-price auctions: Overbidding as an identifying restriction," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 484-506.
    5. Andreas Roider & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2012. "Auctions with Anticipated Emotions: Overbidding, Underbidding, and Optimal Reserve Prices," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(3), pages 808-830, September.
    6. Oliver Kirchkamp & Wladislaw Mill, 2019. "Spite vs. risk: explaining overbidding," CESifo Working Paper Series 7631, CESifo.
    7. Kirchkamp, Oliver & Mill, Wladislaw, 2021. "Spite vs. risk: Explaining overbidding in the second-price all-pay auction," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 616-635.
    8. Neugebauer, Tibor & Selten, Reinhard, 2006. "Individual behavior of first-price auctions: The importance of information feedback in computerized experimental markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 183-204, January.
    9. Breitmoser, Yves, 2019. "Knowing me, imagining you: Projection and overbidding in auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 423-447.
    10. Ulrike Malmendier & Young Han Lee, 2011. "The Bidder's Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 749-787, April.
    11. Breitmoser, Yves, 2017. "Knowing Me, Imagining You:," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 36, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    12. Yves Breitmoser & Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, 2022. "Obviousness around the clock," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 483-513, April.
    13. Kocher, Martin G. & Pahlke, Julius & Trautmann, Stefan T., 2015. "An experimental study of precautionary bidding," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 27-38.
    14. Andreoni, James & Che, Yeon-Koo & Kim, Jinwoo, 2007. "Asymmetric information about rivals' types in standard auctions: An experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 240-259, May.
    15. Kocher, Martin G. & Pahlke, Julius & Trautmann, Stefan T., 2010. "An Experimental Test of Precautionary Bidding," Discussion Papers in Economics 11743, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    16. Bartling, Björn & Netzer, Nick, 2016. "An externality-robust auction: Theory and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 186-204.
    17. Peter Cramton & Emel Filiz-Ozbay & Erkut Ozbay & Pacharasut Sujarittanonta, 2012. "Discrete clock auctions: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(2), pages 309-322, June.
    18. Malmendier, Ulrike & Szeidl, Adam, 2020. "Fishing for fools," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 105-129.
    19. Freeman, David J. & Kimbrough, Erik O. & Reiss, J. Philipp, 2020. "Opportunity cost, inattention and the bidder’s curse," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    20. Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta & Sonsino, Doron, 2004. "Comparative study of one-bid versus two-bid auctions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 561-583, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Experiments; Auction; Bounded rationality; Overbidding; Underbidding; Markdown bidding;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jogath:v:48:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s00182-019-00678-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.