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Snipers, Shills, and Sharks: eBay and Human Behavior
Ken Steiglitz Manufacturer: Princeton University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0691127131 |
Book Description
Every day on eBay, millions of people buy and sell a vast array of goods, from rare collectibles and antiques to used cars and celebrity memorabilia. The internet auction site is remarkably easy to use, which accounts in part for its huge popularity. But how does eBay really work, and how does it compare to other kinds of auctions? These are questions that led Ken Steiglitz--computer scientist, collector of ancient coins, and a regular eBay user--to examine the site through the revealing lens of auction theory.
The result is this book, in which Steiglitz shows us how human behaviors in open markets like eBay can be substantially more complex than those predicted by standard economic theory. In these pages we meet the sniper who outbids you in an auction's closing seconds, the early bidder who treats eBay as if it were an old-fashioned outcry auction, the shill who bids in league with the seller to artificially inflate the price--and other characters as well. Steiglitz guides readers through the fascinating history of auctions, how they functioned in the past and how they work today in online venues like eBay. Drawing on cutting-edge economics as well as his own stories from eBay, he reveals practical auction strategies and introduces readers to the fundamentals of auction theory and the mathematics behind eBay.
Complete with exercises and a detailed appendix, this book is a must for sophisticated users of online auctions, and essential reading for students seeking an accessible introduction to the study of auction theory.
Customer Reviews:
Good read.......2007-08-27
Enthralling. It gets better as it goes on........2007-07-08
Engaging, informative, and entertaining!.......2007-07-03
Not terribly substantive, and not even that fun to read.......2007-05-01
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Putting Auction Theory to Work (Churchill Lectures in Economics)
Paul Milgrom Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0521536723 |
Book Description
Providing a comprehensive introduction to modern auction theory and its important new applications, this book is written by a leading economic theorist whose suggestions guided the creation of the new spectrum auction designs. Aimed at graduate students and professionals in economics, the volume provides the most up-to-date analysis of traditional theories of "optimal auctions" as well as newer theories of multi-unit auctions and package auctions, and shows by example how these theories are used. It explores the limitations of prominent older designs, such as the Vickrey auction design, and evaluates the practical responses to those limitations. Paul Milgrom is the Leonard and Shirley Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Economics, Stanford University. He is the author of more than sixty articles and co-author of the influential textbook, Economics, Organization and Management (Prentice Hall, 1992). Professor Milgrom is a pioneer in the economic theory of auctions and co-designer of the simultaneous, multiple round auction that the FCC adopted for selling radio spectrum licenses.
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Auction Theory
Vijay Krishna Manufacturer: Academic Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 012426297X |
Book Description
Through accessible, detailed examinations of themes central to auction theory, Vijay Krishna explores auctions and competitive bidding as games of incomplete information. His results on bidding strategies, efficiency, and revenue maximization, and his clear proofs for each proposition, make this book both the standard reference on auctions and the first source of authoritative information about multi-unit auctions. Well organized and featuring straightforward intuition, Auction Theory's depth and breadth lay bare the complexity and utility of this growing field.Customer Reviews:
Do not buy the online copy.......2007-05-31
The Best.......2006-05-03
Accessible and straightforward. Thumbs up!.......2005-10-18
Clear, Rigorous and Intuitive.......2003-11-12
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Auctions: Theory and Practice (The Toulouse Lectures in Economics)
Paul Klemperer Manufacturer: Princeton University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0691119252 |
Book Description
Governments use them to sell everything from oilfields to pollution permits, and to privatize companies; consumers rely on them to buy baseball tickets and hotel rooms, and economic theorists employ them to explain booms and busts. Auctions make up many of the world's most important markets; and this book describes how auction theory has also become an invaluable tool for understanding economics.
Auctions: Theory and Practice provides a non-technical introduction to auction theory, and emphasises its practical application. Although there are many extremely successful auction markets, there have also been some notable fiascos, and Klemperer provides many examples. He discusses the successes and failures of the one-hundred-billion dollar "third-generation" mobile-phone license auctions; he, jointly with Ken Binmore, designed the first of these.
Klemperer also demonstrates the surprising power of auction theory to explain seemingly unconnected issues such as the intensity of different forms of industrial competition, the costs of litigation, and even stock trading 'frenzies' and financial crashes.
Engagingly written, the book makes the subject exciting not only to economics students but to anyone interested in auctions and their role in economics.
Customer Reviews:
Brilliant explanation of real-world auction theory.......2006-04-20
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Combinatorial Auctions
Peter Cramton , Yoav Shoham , and Richard Steinberg Manufacturer: The MIT Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0262033429 |
Book Description
The study of combinatorial auctions -- auctions in which bidders can bid on combinations of items or "packages" -- draws on the disciplines of economics, operations research, and computer science. This landmark collection integrates these three perspectives, offering a state-of-the art survey of developments in combinatorial auction theory and practice by leaders in the field.Customer Reviews:
Comprehensive and Understandable.......2006-02-15
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An Introduction to Auction Theory
Flavio M. Menezes , and Paulo K. Monteiro Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 019927598X |
Book Description
Auction theory is now an important component of an economist's training. The techniques and insights gained from the study of auction theory provide a useful starting point for those who want to venture into the economics of information, mechanism design, and regulatory economics. This book provides a step-by-step, self-contained treatment of the theory of auctions. It allows students and readers with a calculus background to work through all the basic results, covering the basic independent-private-model; the effects of introducing correlation in valuations on equilibrium behaviour and the seller's expected revenue; mechanism design; and the theory of multi-object auctions.
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Rings in Auctions: An Experimental Approach (Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems)
Angelo Artale Manufacturer: Springer ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 3540619305 |
Book Description
This book deals with experimental studies in economics. It investigates experimentally collusions in first-price auctions with private values. Since the main aim of the study is to see which mechanisms are used when the subjects may collude, the participants are allowed to communicate as long as they want, before they made their bids, but after they have known their private valuations. Moreover, the winner is allowed to make side payments to losing bidders. The subjects have to invent the mechanism they want to use by themselves. The theoretical possibilities are not explained to them. Four mechanisms have been observed. For each of them, we provide a game theoretical analysis and we compare the data with the theoretical prediction.
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Auctions: The Social Construction of Value
Charles W. Smith Manufacturer: University of California Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0520072014 |
Book Description
Long the preferred method of exchange for antiques and horseflesh, auctions are used today to sell everything from bestselling books to real estate, government bonds to abandoned automobiles. As sociologist Charles Smith reveals, the mechanical law of supply and demand rarely governs the auction process. Rather value is determined by a complex social process combining both the beliefs and actions of the auction participants and the assumptions and practices on the auction floor. Based on years of participation in and observation of different types of auctions and interviews with hundreds of auctioneers, Smith gives us not only a theoretical understanding of the auction process but the sights and sounds as well.
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The Double Auction Market: Institutions, Theories, and Evidence (Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity Proceedings)
Dan Friedman , Daniel P. Friedman , and John Rust Manufacturer: Westview Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 0201624591 |
Book Description
This book is a collection of papers focused on markets organized as double auctions (DA). In a double auction, both buyers and sellers can actively present bids (offers to buy) and asks (offers to sell) for standardized units of well-defined commodities and securities. A classic example of a DA market (known by practitioners as an open outcry market) is the commodity trading pit at the Chicago Board of Trade. A related process is a call market, which is used to determine opening prices on the New York Stock Exchange.
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Digital Dealing: How e-Markets Are Transforming the Economy
Robert Ernest Hall Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 0393042103 |
Amazon.com
Despite floundering stocks, tanking valuations, accelerating layoffs, and intensifying skepticism, the Internet remains a place where business deals of all kinds are increasingly executed. Stanford economics professor Robert Hall studied the myriad forms of business-to-consumer and business-to-business "electronic dickering" now evolving online, and he astutely analyzes their structure and potential in Digital Dealing. "Consumers buy books and sell Barbie dolls. Investors buy stocks and bonds. Businesses buy steel ingots and sell bulldozers," he writes. All consistently improve these automated systems in the process, he adds, and will ultimately ensure they are more efficient than comparable types of traditional dealmaking. In a discussion certain to spark the imagination, Hall details six primary methods now used to consummate such online transactions: the eBay model (many sellers offering many products to many buyers), the OffRoad model (one seller offering multiple units of one product to many buyers), the FreeMarkets model (one buyer requesting one product from many suppliers), the Nasdaq model (many sellers offering similar products to many buyers), the Priceline model (many customers seeking similar products from many sellers), and the Grainger/Amazon model (one seller offering many products to many buyers at rates that may be set or negotiable). Readers should find his insights illuminating and potentially transferable to their own operations. --Howard RothmanBook Description
A leading economist explains where and how electronic deal making will flourish and highlights common pitfalls for entrepreneurs and investors. Digital Dealing gets to the heart of e-commerce by explaining the principles of e-market systems: which players will come to the table and why, and how automated deal making can improve the efficiency of their commerce. With examples ranging from the history of NASDAQ to the rise and fall of Priceline, this concise book details how the major deal-making methodsauctions, real-time exchanges, and posted-price sales enginescan determine the success or failure of an e-commerce enterprise. In addition, Robert Hall shows how careful decisions about information sharing, patents, network effects, government regulations, and other factors will allow entrepreneurs to make the most of Internet business opportunities. As e-market volume more than doubles each yearand the success stories increasingly stand out among the many failuresunderstanding the principles of electronic deal making has become critical. This book sheds needed light on fundamental new business models.Customer Reviews:
A prelude to online, automated, intelligent eCommerce........2004-01-25
In chapter 1 of the book the author gives an overview of the nature of e-markets, and the phenomenon of "dickering" (bargaining or haggling) for the best price. Successful e-markets in his view must support automated versions of dickering, and engage in deal-making despite the desire to hide the 'best price'. The author gives four steps that he believes will ensure a successful e-commerce system: the identification of potential trading partners, followed by the transmission and reception of trading interest and dickering with potential partners, the actual carrying out the deal, and lastly the providing of the information about the deal to other traders. He also lists, and then discusses what he believes are the most effective e-market models: eBay, OffRoad, FreeMarkets, Nasdaq, Priceline, and Grainger. The author also discusses the need for transparency in terms of three categories, namely the identity of traders, the terms of the bids, and the terms of the deal. The author does not overemphasize the role of e-markets, and clearly many firms still using traditional business practices are feeling threatened by them. No doubt they will have to adapt to the organized, efficient, and rational nature of e-markets.
Chapter 2 overviews the "deal engines" that can do auctions, with the first example the author studying being the English auction, which is deployed by sites such as eBay, and which the author claims is the predominant form of auctioneering on the Internet. What is interesting about the eBay auction process, as pointed out by the author, is that it uses "proxy bidding", which does not require a bidder to be logged on in the bidding process. This automation of the bidding process will be even more powerful when it is extended to more elaborate financial transactions. The author also discusses the trade-offs involved in transparency during the bidding process. First-price and second-price sealed-bid auctions are also discussed, and the author compares these three different types of auctions according to their advantages for bidder and seller. The author also explains the use of the activity rule in making auctions more transparent. Even more importantly, the author discusses two-sided auctions, which are used in electricity auctions for example, and the various auction abuses that can occur.
In chapter 3, the author discusses various auction mechanisms that are in place for stocks and bonds. Treasury auctions are discussed first, the author pointing out the reason for such a thin tick in such auctions, namely that there is not a wide variation in the estimation of the price of Treasury bills by investors. The author discusses municipal bonds next, emphasizing the advantages of getting into the auction in the last minute. Due to their relatively new arrival in e-auctions, corporate bond auctions are discussed only briefly via the OpenBook auction house of W.R. Hambrecht, which the reader can get more information on if needed on the Web. This is followed by a very interesting discussion on auctions for private equity, with OffRoad Capital furnishing an example of selling private equity via a semi-open-book single-price auction. The author points out the similarity with mutual funds when investing in OffRoad, and discusses the three phases that OffRoad uses for selling a new issue of private equity. The author ends the chapter with discussions of the W.R. Hambrecht IPO auction and auctions for traded stock.
The author overviews, in chapter 4, the role of B-to-B procurement auctions in eMarkets, asserting that automated dickering is a playing a larger role in a business that is now at $100, 000, 000, 000, 000 worldwide. One of the downsides though for e-markets he says is that cooperation between buyer and seller will be difficult because of the standardization in the bid process. The negotiation that must occur when custom-made capital equipment is involved cannot be done easily in e-markets he claims. He is certainly correct if gauged by current standards, but online negotiation is now an intense area of research, and there are many new approaches that allow real-time negotiation online that will fill the requirements that the author discusses. FreeMarkets.com is discussed at the most successful of the online industrial procurement engines. The global supply management function of FreeMarkets has been profitable so far, the author argues, but its biggest problem is that one could use its platform to seek bids to replace its services. These services, according to the author, could become a commodity, with its price set to low levels via the capabilities that FreeMarkets has allowed the clients to use. The author contrasts FreeMarkets with Perfect.com, the latter of which provides software, called PerfectMarket, to actually serve as consultants for online virtual auctions. Suppliers are asked to formulate bidding strategies illustrating how they would respond to what is occurring during an auction. This procurement strategy can be refined by running auctions several times, and the bidding rules are kept secret by Perfect Market, which then effectively acts like a trusted third party. The author remarks that Perfect Market is the only auction system to use the second-price Vickrey principle where bids include more than one price. It is the opinion of this reviewer that online auctioneering will become even more sophisticated in the years ahead, due mainly to advances in machine intelligence.
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