Selling 'Money' on EBay: a Field Study of Surplus Division

Alia Gizatulina () and Olga Gorelkina
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Alia Gizatulina: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, https://www.coll.mpg.de/

No 2104, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: We study the division of trade surplus in a natural field experiment on German eBay. Acting as a seller, we offer Amazon gift cards with face values of up to 500 Euro. A random selection of buyers, the subjects of our experiment, make price offers according to the rules of eBay. Using a novel decomposition method, we infer the offered shares of trade surplus from the data and find that the average share proposed to the seller amounts to about $30 \%$. Additionally, we document: (i) insignificant effects of stake size; (ii) poor use of strategically relevant public information; and (iii) differences between East and West German subjects.

Keywords: Field experiment; surplus division; bargaining; Internet trade; eBay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C57 C72 C93 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-pay
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Related works:
Journal Article: Selling “Money” on eBay: A field study of surplus division (2021)
Working Paper: Selling Money on Ebay: A Field Study of Surplus Division (2016)
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