Exploring Market Dispersion and Factors that Predict Auction Success of a Commodity: The Case of Three E-Auction Markets

The current study presents emerging evidence of the heterogeneities of dispersion in price and number of bidders and the combination of factors that predict auction success across electronic auction (e-auction) markets in various countries. We argue that heterogeneities in e-auction markets exist and understanding them can benefit market participants. A spider program was developed to collect live auction data of commodity transactions from e-auction markets in three different countries: Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our results confirm heterogeneities across these markets. We also found that each e-auction market has a different set of success factors. The article concludes with recommendations to participating members of auctions

The Onset of Health Problems and the Propensity of Workers to Change Employers and Occupations

Although many studies have investigated how poor health affects hours of work and labor force participation, few have examined the extent to which individuals adapt in order to remain in the labor market. Individuals experiencing health problems may move to different types of work in order to remain in the labor force or to reduce the negative labor market consequences of illness. This paper investigates the movement between employers, and among occupation categories when changing employers, using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). One advantage of the HRS is that its questions on life-cycle employment and health patterns permit a long-term perspective on job mobility that is unavailable in most other datasets. Workers with health problems are more likely than healthy workers to remain with their current employer than to switch employers. But among those who switch employers, those with health problems are more likely to change broad occupational categories than are healthy workers. While many individuals remain with the same employer after the onset of health problems, many do switch employers and occupations, even in the presence of ADA legislation. Copyright 2003 Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky..