Theodore L.
Turocy, Elizabeth Watson,
and Raymond C. Battalio
Department of Economics
Texas A&M University
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We revisit the result that, in the independent private values
setting, the first-price sealed bid and descending clock (or Dutch)
auction are not
isomorphic. We investigate the hypothesis that the empirical
non-isomorphism arises from framing and presentation effects. Our
design focuses on a careful construction of subject interfaces that
present the two environments as similarly as possible. Our sessions
also consist of more auction periods to test whether the initial
framing effects are subsequently washed away by greater experience. We
find the difference between the implementations persists. We also
investigate an intermediate implementation which operates like the
Dutch auction, but in which the clock continues to tick to the lowest
price without informing bidders when others have bid on the object.
This implementation gives results in between the sealed-bid and Dutch
implementations.
Current version dated August 2006. Available in: [pdf]. This paper is forthcoming in Experimental Economics.
Screenshots of the instruction screens viewed by the subjects are available. These are ZIP archives containing PNG images of the screens. [Sealed bid] [Silent] [Dutch]
The raw data, as well as the source code for programs used to generate the data analysis in the paper, are available in [.zip format]. The README file in the archive describes the various files.