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American Economic Review Vol. 86 No. 3 1996

Revenue Effects and Information Processing in English Common Value Auctions

Dan Levin; John H. Kagel; Jean François Richard

Abstract

An experiment analyzing behavior in English common value auctions is reported. English auctions raise more revenue than first-price auctions only when bidders do not suffer from a strong winner's curse. Agents employ other bidders' dropout prices along with their private information as Nash bidding theory predicts. However, a simple and natural signal-averaging rule, that does not require recognizing the adverse-selection effect of winning the auction, better characterizes the data than the Nash rule. Monte Carlo simulations using FIML estimates of the signal-averaging rule predict a number of data characteristics not directly employed in the estimation procedure.

Volume
86
Issue
3
Pages
442-460
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib

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