Subject:
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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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Tue, 4 May 1999 19:14:21 GMT
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Viewed:
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629 times
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A question I have been pondering for the last week is whether it really matters
how long an auction lasts. I did some interesting research on eBay over the
weekend. I collected the results of 77 auctions for the same item, set 7140
(the Star Wars X-wing fighter), from April 11th to 29th. I came up with some
very interesting results:
# 3-day auctions: 32
# 4 & 5 day auctions: 13
# 7-day auctions: 32
Average # bids for 3-day auctions: 7.09
Average # bids for 4 & 5 day auctions: 7.85
Average # bids for 7-day auctions: 7.00
Average closing price for 3-day auctions: $37.60
Average closing price for 4 & 5-day auctions: $35.90
Average closing price for 7-day auctions: $38.21
I sent the data to my mother, who's an ecomometrician, and she ran some
regressions. She found almost no connection between auction length and number
of bids, or auction length and closing price. The only strong effect she found
was that the closing price fell as April progressed, which is exactly what you
would expect as the people who most desperately wanted the sets got them, and
the set became more and more available in the stores.
It seems to me that auction length (beyond making them absurdly short) doesn't
matter that much; that there is an innate level of activity that is required to
arrive at the efficient price, and if you make the auction shorter you just
compress that activity into a shorter amount of time.
Anyone else have an opinion on this?
- chris
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Does auction length matter?
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| (...) Interesting, thanks! Result seems counter intuitive, though. I know that I don't have time to search every day, and in fact would consistently miss auctions that started and ended within 3 days. Is publicity not a factor? How could that be? Is (...) (25 years ago, 4-May-99, to lugnet.market.theory)
| | | Re: Does auction length matter?
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| (...) Not really an opinion, but some data: In my experience, Mondays and Tuesdays are always the biggest days for jumps in activity -- and actually, with Tuesday being a little bigger than Monday -- always -- every week -- no exceptions. It's (...) (25 years ago, 5-May-99, to lugnet.market.theory)
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