Compensating for the winner's curse: Experimental evidence

We conduct experiments on common value auctions with rationing. In each auction, the good is randomly allocated to one of the k highest bidders, at the (k+ 1) highest price. When k > 1, bidders are rationed. As the degree of rationing increases, the equilibrium bid function increases. Experimentally, we find that bidders suffer from the winner’s curse, and lose money on average. However, bids in the experiments do adjust in the appropriate direction as the degree of rationing changes, providing support for the comparative statics implications of the theory. We demonstrate the connection between the experimental results and a theoretical measure of the winner’s curse. Our results are consistent with subjects having an intuitive understanding of the winner’s curse, but being unable to compute the equilibrium bid levels.