Economic Effects of Multiple Intelligent Agents in Online Auctions

Online auction mechanism has enriched the trading community. It brings together both sellers and buyers from around the world without the geographical limitations and time constraints. In this paper, an auction market is simulated with multiple English auctions that are running concurrently consisting of human bidders and intelligent agents with various bidding strategies. For the analysis, we considered the market economy such as the auction closing price trend and the number of auctions that were closed successfully. We also studied a situation where a market is fully populated by different types of intelligent agents. Based on the results obtained, we discovered that bidders received more surplus and they are more satisfied when they are using bidder agents rather than bidding in the auctions themselves. From the seller’s perspective, they may not welcome these bidder agents since their revenues are reduced in a market with finite number of auctions and participants.