Sophisticated Bidders in Beauty-Contest Auctions
研究企业在选美比赛拍卖（以最接近所有投标均值的投标获胜）中的行为，发现实际投标偏离均衡，可用反映过去接近最优能力的“老练指数”预测，且与认知层级模型一致。
We study bidding behavior by firms in beauty-contest auctions, i.e., auctions in which the winning bid is the one that gets closest to some function (average) of all submitted bids. Using a dataset on public procurement beauty-contest auctions, we show that firms’ observed bidding behavior departs from equilibrium and can be predicted by a “sophistication” index, which captures the firms’ capacity of bidding close to optimality in the past. We show that our empirical evidence is consistent with a Cognitive Hierarchy model of bidders’ behavior. We also investigate whether and how firms learn to bid strategically through experience.