Testing for affiliation in first-price auctions using entry behavior

Abstract

In this article, we show that affiliation among potential bidders' private information (either private signals or entry costs) leads to affiliation among their entry decisions. We propose a test for affiliation among potential bidders' private information based on the implication of affiliation on the entry behavior, which is general and widely applicable to various scenarios. The test is implemented using the simulation based method. We then apply our method to timber sales in the Oregon Department of Forestry and find a small but strongly significant level of affiliation among all timber companies. © (2010) by the Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.