Quote from: itod on October 15, 2013, 05:45:13 PM

So, you would be interested in auction that may and in 5 mins or 20 mins, and nobody knows when? My hunch is that sellers would not like this, they love when bids jump high in the last seconds of the auction. Deny them that profit and they would not want to bring their goods to such an auction system.

Maybe. It could be the typical outcome would be the same; there are often flurries in end bidding in live auctions as well, particularly in items where there is no well-defined value (artwork, animals, bitcoin miners).

ProfMac might know of this man: an economist named Vernon Smith, who won a Nobel prize for his work in experimental economics. Smith would conduct experiments, replicating markets, with students and others, with incentives of real money gains, and obtained insights into those areas of econ where theory could not tread: those areas where "there were people in them."

Someone of Smith's school of thought would try auctions of both forms, and see if there really was a consistent expected difference.