PPIN Speaker Murnighan on Live and Online Auction Bidding
Keith Murnighan will be the February speaker at the Seminar on Psychological Processes in Negotiation. He is the Harold J. Hines Jr. Distinguished Professor of Risk Management at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University. The title of his presentation is Live and Internet Auction Bidding: Experimental and Field Studies, based on a paper co-authored by Gillian Ku, Deepak Malhotra, and Peter Foreman.
Following the presentation, there will be a wine and cheese reception on the 2nd floor lounge of William James. All interested parties are invited to attend.
For more information, please contact Kessely Hong, at kessely_hong_2000@ksgalum.harvard.edu; telephone 617-495-0459.
Prof. Murnighan’s Abstract
“This talk will summarize some old and more recent work on the behavior of auction bidders in live and Internet auctions. The talk will trace the history of our research projects and focus on the questions concerning the winners’ curse (briefly) and auction fever (at more length). The talk will describe how:
- attempts to provide bidders with considerable feedback and experience does not eliminate the winners’ curse;
- first-mover advantage leads to sizable gains in public auctions;
- live auctions generate higher bids than internet auctions;
- hype pays; and
- the confluence of competition and time pressure can ratchet up final auction prices when bidding is active and bidders are few rather than many.
The talk will also describe several qualifications that reduce the generality of these conclusions and will explore the possibility that auction bidding provides an interesting venue for studying high-stakes, time-pressured decision making.”
