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Identification and Estimation of Risk Aversion in First Price Auctions With Unobserved Auction Heterogeneity

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Abstract

We extent the point-identification result in Guerre, Perrigne, and Vuong (2009) to environments with one-dimensional unobserved auction heterogeneity. In addition, we also show a robustness result for the case where the exclusion restriction used for point identification is violated: We provide conditions to ensure that the primitives recovered under the violated exclusion restriction still bound the true primitives in this case. We propose a new Sieve Maximum Likelihood Estimator, show its consistency and illustrate its finite sample performance in a Monte Carlo experiment. We investigate the bias in risk aversion estimates if unobserved auction heterogeneity is ignored and explain why the sign of the bias depends on the correlation between the number of bidders and the unobserved auction heterogeneity. In an application to USFS timber auctions we find that the bidders are risk neutral, but we would reject risk neutrality without accounting for unobserved auction heterogeneity.

Suggested Citation

  • Serafin J. Grundl & Yu Zhu, 2015. "Identification and Estimation of Risk Aversion in First Price Auctions With Unobserved Auction Heterogeneity," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-89, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2015-89
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2015.089
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    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. JoonHwan Cho & Yao Luo & Ruli Xiao, 2022. "Deconvolution from Two Order Statistics," Working Papers tecipa-739, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    3. Kim, Dong-Hyuk & Ratan, Anmol, 2022. "Disentangling risk aversion and loss aversion in first-price auctions: An empirical approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    4. Nathalie Gimenes & Tonghui Qi & Sorawoot Srisuma, 2025. "Identification and Estimation of Seller Risk Aversion in Ascending Auctions," Papers 2509.19945, arXiv.org.
    5. Grundl, Serafin & Zhu, Yu, 2024. "Two results on auctions with endogenous entry," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    6. Vasserman, Shoshana & Watt, Mitchell, 2021. "Risk aversion and auction design: Theoretical and empirical evidence," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    7. Jun, Sung Jae & Zincenko, Federico, 2022. "Testing for risk aversion in first-price sealed-bid auctions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 226(2), pages 295-320.
    8. JoonHwan Cho & Yao Luo & Ruli Xiao, 2024. "Deconvolution from two order statistics," Papers 2403.17777, arXiv.org.
    9. Emmanuel Guerre & Yao Luo, 2019. "Nonparametric Identification of First-Price Auction with Unobserved Competition: A Density Discontinuity Framework," Papers 1908.05476, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2024.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • C57 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Econometrics of Games and Auctions
    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions

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