2008Munich Personal RePEc Archive (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)Open access

Are eBay auctions efficient? A model with buyer entries

Ching‐I Huang

Open full text 0 citations

Abstract

I use a sequential-auction model to mimic the environment of Internet auction sites, such as eBay. For a sequence of auctions, new buyers may enter the auction site after some of the auctions has completed and only bid for the remaining auctions. Because an incumbent buyer may have revealed their own valuation in earlier auctions while a new entrant do not, their expectations about the future are asymmetric. As a result, a buyer with a lower valuation may win an auction while a buyer with a higher valuation may restrain from bidding higher, resulting an inefficient allocation. On the contrary, selling the multiple items in a single simultaneous auction results in an efficient outcome. The profit from selling all items together in one simultaneous auction is less than that from selling them sequentially.

Open-access reader

About this research paper

What this paper is about

I use a sequential-auction model to mimic the environment of Internet auction sites, such as eBay. For a sequence of auctions, new buyers may enter the auction site after some of the auctions has completed and only bid for the remaining auctions. Because an incumbent buyer may have revealed their own valuation in earlier auctions while a new entrant do not, their expectations about the future are asymmetric. As a result, a buyer with a lower valuation may win an auction while a buyer with a higher valuation may restrain from bidding higher, resulting an inefficient allocation. On the contrary, selling the multiple items in a single simultaneous auction results in an efficient outcome. The profit from selling all items together in one simultaneous auction is less than that from selling them sequentially.

Why it matters

A significance statement is not available in the OpenAlex record.

Key contribution

A contribution statement is not available in the OpenAlex record.

Method / approach

Method details are not available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Main findings

Findings are not separately available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Limitations

Limitations are not available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Applications

Application details are not available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Available abstract

I use a sequential-auction model to mimic the environment of Internet auction sites, such as eBay. For a sequence of auctions, new buyers may enter the auction site after some of the auctions has completed and only bid for the remaining auctions. Because an incumbent buyer may have revealed their own valuation in earlier auctions while a new entrant do not, their expectations about the future are asymmetric. As a result, a buyer with a lower valuation may win an auction while a buyer with a higher valuation may restrain from bidding higher, resulting an inefficient allocation. On the contrary, selling the multiple items in a single simultaneous auction results in an efficient outcome. The profit from selling all items together in one simultaneous auction is less than that from selling them sequentially.

Key concepts: Common value auction, Forward auction, Eauction, Bidding, English auction, Microeconomics, Reverse auction, Valuation (finance)

Related papers

Back to paper searchBrowse research topicsOriginal source
Are eBay auctions efficient? A model with buyer entries — Research Paper | ScholarLens