Ascending/Descending Auction

This is a software realization of English Auction in its Ascending form. During the auction, the price rises continuously, but players must publicly announce that they are dropping out when the price becomes too high. Once a bidder has dropped out, he may not reenter. The current implementation also allows a speculator who can re-sell goods to other bidders.

By switching a parameter in the parameter file, this implementation can also be used to simulate descending auction which is also known as the Dutch Auction. In a Dutch auction, bidding starts at an extremely high price and is progressively lowered until a buyer claims an item by pressing the 'Buy' button that stops an automatic clock.

Reference

Speculators in Standard Auctions with Resale (Rod Garratt, UCSB and Thomas Troger, UCSB).

Rod Garratt (UCSB) and Thomas Troeger (UCSB) are running experiments to test their theories of bidding behavior in auctions that include speculators. Both ascending- and descending-price auctions are being conducted. They are particularly interested in the impact speculators have on efficiency and initial seller revenue in different auction environments.

Current implementation can auction only one item with one unit at a time.

View adauction-sample.txt.

Download adauction-sample.txt.

Click here for the current release of the software.