Behavioral Mechanism Design: Evidence from the Modified First-Price Auctions
Yusufcan Masatlioglu, Sarah Taylor, and Neslihan Uler ,
2-3
( 16 )
Review of Economic Design
159-173
September
2012
Abstract

This paper tests the behavioral equivalence of a class of strategically-equivalent mechanisms that also do not differ in terms of their procedures. In a private value setting, we introduce a family of mechanisms, so-called Mechanism (α), that generalizes the standard first-price sealed-bid auction. In Mechanism (α), buyers are asked to submit a value which will then be multiplied by α to calculate the bids in the auction. When α = 1, Mechanism (α) is the standard first-price sealed-bid auction. We show that for any α, calculated bids should be identical across mechanisms.

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