Bidding into bankruptcy: How auction order affects overbidding and losses
研究了序贯拍卖中商品拍卖顺序对全球竞拍者过度出价和损失的影响，发现先拍卖低方差商品会显著增加亏损概率，而效率与收入主要由协同效应决定。
Global bidders in sequential auctions face exposure risk when bidding for complementary goods whose values differ in uncertainty. We study how auction order affects this risk in a sequential second-price auction with heterogeneous products, where one good has relatively high valuation variance and the other has low valuation variance. Motivated by simulation-based comparative statics in finite-variance environments, we use laboratory experiments to examine whether auctioning the low-variance good first increases the likelihood of ex-post losses for global bidders. We find that negative payoffs occur significantly more often when the low-variance product is sold first, across both low- and high-synergy environments. Efficiency and revenue are primarily driven by the level of synergy and are not systematically influenced by order. We also document systematic overbidding that depends on auction order and interim outcomes, with bidding behavior differing sharply depending on whether bidders win or lose the first product.