Experimental Evidence on English Auctions: Oral Outcry vs. Clock

Abstract

This paper tests experimentally, in a common value setting, the equivalence between the Japanese English auction (or clock auction) and an open outcry auction, where bidders are allowed to call their own bids. We find that (i) bidding behaviour is different in each type of auction, but also that (ii) this difference in bidding behaviour does not affect significantly the auction prices. This lends some support to the equivalence between these two types of auction. The winner's curse is present: overbidding led to higher than expected prices (under Nash bidding strategies) in both types of auction.English auctions, discrete bidding, winner's curse