CRIEFF Discussion Paper Number 0609

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Expectations in first-price auctions

Oliver Kirchkamp, Philipp Reiss

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Abstract
Bids in private value first price auctions consistently deviate from risk neutral symmetric equilibrium bids. It is difficult to explain this deviation with risk aversion. We propose and test two other explanations: (1) Bidders do not form correct expectations. (2) Bidders do not play a best reply against their expectations.

We present a novel experimental setup which allows to observe bids and expectations separately. We extensively test the internal validity of this setup. We find that off equilibrium expectations explain, if at all, underbidding. Off equilibrium bids do not seem to be due to wrong expectations but due to deviations from a best reply.

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JEL Classifications
C92, D44

Keywords
Experiments, Auction, Expectations.

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