You might think that a “
dollar auction” is just a more expensive
penny auction, but it isn’t. Well, not exactly.
A Dollar Auction Was a Game
The dollar auction was a parlor game invented by the economist Martin Shubik, working with John Nash, the crazy guy from the movie A Beautiful Mind.
The dollar auction was a standard auction, except bidders paid whether they won or not. The “merchandise” being auctioned off was a dollar bill (hence the name, dollar auction). When the dollar auction was at a nickel or so, the bidders thought they were getting a great deal, so of course they didn’t drop out. Then, as the bid-level approached “par” (what the merchandise was worth — in this case, a dollar), the bidders would start to realize that winning wasn’t going to be such a great deal, but that losing was not a great option either (because, remember, bidders would have to pay whether they won or not). If the bidding stopped at 99¢, the winner only made one cent, but the the loser would lose 98¢!
To Bid One More Time
Once the bidding started, it was always in a bidder’s interest to bid one more time. Shubik wrote later, “Experience with the game has shown that it is possible to ‘sell’ a dollar bill for considerably more than a dollar. A total of payments between three and five dollars is not uncommon.” The dollar auction, at this point, is not driven by math or money at all, but by psychology.
If there’s an auction between Bob and Sam, and the auction is hammered down in Bob’s favor at $5.00, Sam must have just decided to lose $4.99 instead of making one more bid and “winning,” thereby losing only $4.01 (since he would pay $5.01 but get a dollar as the prize).
Why did Sam do that? Why did he walk away? How did the dollar auction change between the point where the bidding was at 50¢ and the point he finally quit?
Well, for one thing, Sam realized he was screwed. He had belatedly grasped the economics of the auction and decided to step off the merry-go-round. Of course, he could have achieved the same effect at less cost by just thinking through the consequences before he started, but he didn’t.
But Sam learned something else, something he could have only learned from participating in the auction: he learned just how stupid and stubborn his opponent Bob was. Bob demonstrated that he was willing to lose any amount of money in order to “win.” Sam was wise enough to realize that fact and flexible enough to act on the realization.
