Sealed Bid Auctions vs. Ascending Bid Auctions: An Experimental Study

This paper considers the sealed bid and ascending auction, which both identifies the minimum Walrasian equilibrium prices and where truthful preference revelation constitutes an equilibrium. Even though these auction formats share many theortical properties, there are behavioral aspects that are not easily captured. To explore this issue in more detail, this paper experimentally investigates what role the design of the auction format has for its outcome. The results suggest that the sealed bid mechanism performs weakly better in all of investigated measures (consistent reporting, efficiency etc.). In addition, we find that the performance of the ascending auction is increasing over time, whereas the sealed bid auction shows no such tendency.Auctions; Non-manipulability; Efficiency; Experiments

The Lund Model at Nonzero Impact Parameter

We extend the formulation of the longitudinal 1+1 dimensional Lund model to nonzero impact parameter using the minimal area assumption. Complete formulae for the string breaking probability and the momenta of the produced mesons are derived using the string worldsheet Minkowskian helicoid geometry. For strings stretched into the transverse dimension, we find probability distribution with slope linear in m_T similar to the statistical models but without any thermalization assumptions.Comment: 12 pages, 2 .eps figures, footnotes added, results unchanged, version to be published in Phys.Lett.