Working Paper

Identification of First-Price Auctions With Biased Beliefs


Abstract: This paper exploits variation in the number of bidders to separately identify the valuation distribution and the bidders' belief about the valuation distribution in first-price auctions with independent private values. Exploiting variation in auction volume the result is extended to environments with risk averse bidders. In an illustrative application we fail to reject the null hypothesis of correct beliefs.

Keywords: Biased beliefs; first-price auction; nonparametric identification; risk aversion;

Access Documents

File(s): File format is application/pdf http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/2015056pap.pdf
Description: Full text

File(s): File format is application/pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2015.056
Description: http://dx.doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2015.056

Authors

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Part of Series: Finance and Economics Discussion Series

Publication Date: 2015-07-23

Number: 2015-56

Pages: 44 pages