Subject:
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Re: Does auction length matter?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.market.theory
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Date:
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Wed, 5 May 1999 18:48:40 GMT
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Viewed:
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815 times
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In lugnet.market.theory, David Zorn writes:
> Chris Ernest Hall wrote in message ...
> :In lugnet.market.theory, Todd Lehman writes:
> :>In lugnet.market.theory, fozboot@best.com (Chris Ernest Hall)
> writes:
> :>> [...]
> :>> I followed the threads about eBay's auction rules with great
> interest. My
> :>> step-mother is former Chief Economist of the SEC and a great
> authority on
> :>> auction theory.
> :>
> :>Awesome!!!
> :>
> :>Say, are there trade books or journals on this sort of thing? (Must
> be, but
> :>I wouldn't know where to look.)
> :
> :There's remarkably little written about auctions and auction theory.
> Auctions
> :were basically considered a backwater area of economics (other than
> for people
> :involved with securities) until the Internet came along. Now auction
> theory is
> :an area which is suddenly of great interest to economists. One site
> that
> :recently got my attention is:
> :
> :http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Econ/reiley/home.html
> :
> :He's written some papers which look interesting (I have not had time
> to read
> :them unfortunately) based on experiments selling sportscards over the
> Internet.
> :
>
> I have a PhD in Economics and I do remember reading some articles in
> grad school (ante-Internet) on auctions. I'll try to dig them up.
>
> Most of the Econ lit on auctions that I know of is not empirical or
> not to the level of detail discussed here. There is quite a bit of
> literature over auction types (eg Dutch v. English, sealed-bid v.
> open).
>
> It is very difficult to model real world type auctions where you have
> the same item in various venues auctioned under various rules and with
> various ending times. That is a nightmare for modeling. Nevertheless,
> the data Chris provides do not seem counter intuitive to me. The SW
> Lego auction market is pretty efficient.
>
> The counterintuitive stuff is that items on Ebay frequently sell for
> higher than you could get them for at TRU or S@H. That is probably
> explained by poorly informed bidders or international bidders (where
> the stuff is not available by other means).
It's bizarre that people would pay more for something like the Spaceport three-
item valuepack than they could pay at eToys or at the local Target, Walmart or
Toys r Us. It may be these people are just addicted to the excitement of
winning auctions and don't even care what they're getting. By lowering
transactions costs, the Internet makes all kinds of addictive activities much
easier and more accessible, and auctions are no exception.
- chris
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Does auction length matter?
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| Chris Ernest Hall wrote in message ... :In lugnet.market.theory, Todd Lehman writes: :>In lugnet.market.theory, fozboot@best.com (Chris Ernest Hall) writes: :>> [...] :>> I followed the threads about eBay's auction rules with great interest. My :>> (...) (25 years ago, 5-May-99, to lugnet.market.theory)
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