Online ascending auctions for gradually expiring items

Ascending Auctions for Gradually Expiring Items

We consider auction mechanisms for the allocation ofM items that are identical to each other except for the fact that the items have different expiration times, and each item must be allocated before it expires. This model seems applicable in many economic situations where both items and buyers have a finite “life-time”, e.g. the allocation of transportation tickets. We are interested in situat...

Online As ending Au tions for Gradually Expiring Items

Ranked Items Auctions and Online Advertisement

We study auctions for a set of ranked items where each buyer has a unit demand. This setting has promising applications in areas such as keyword auctions in the search engine advertising industry, the sale of quality ranked raw materials, etc. An auction mechanism suitable for this setting is the simultaneous pooled auction (SPA), where each bidder simultaneously submits a single bid and is all...

Ascending Auctions

A key question of auction design is whether to use an ascending-bid or a sealed-bid format. The critical distinction between formats is that an ascending auction provides the bidders with information through the process of bidding. This information is a two-edged sword. It may stimulate competition by creating a reliable process of price discovery, by reducing the winner’s curse, and by allowin...

Modeling online auctions with proxy-bidding: Ascending versus Sealed Model

This paper presents several empirical tests of the hypothesis that eBay bidders bid “as if” they are in a sealed bid auction. The tests rely on observations of the magnitudes and timing of top two proxy bids. We apply the tests to data from three eBay markets MP3 players, DVDs and Chevrolet Corvettes. All tests reject the sealed-bid model in all three datasets, and a significant portion of auct...