Auctioned and Re-Auctioned Children in 19th Century Sweden

Mats A. Bergman () and Sofia Lundberg ()
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Mats A. Bergman: Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, Postal: P.O. Box 6501, SE-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

No 273, SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance from Stockholm School of Economics

Abstract: During the 19th century, poor and orphan Swedish children were boarded out. The foster-parents' compensation was determined in English auctions. Some children were re-auctioned. We use historical data from such auctions to study whether informational asymmetry and possibly adverse selection affected the outcome in the market for re-auctioned children. The empirical findings are consistent with adverse selection.

Keywords: Adverse selection; asymmetric information; common value; English auction; private values. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D44 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 1998-10-22
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Working Paper: Auctioned and Re-auctioned Children in 19th Century Sweden (1998)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:hastef:0273

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