Benford’s Law and Naturally Occurring Prices in Certain ebaY Auctions

David Giles

No 505, Econometrics Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Victoria

Abstract: We show that certain the winning bids for certain ebaY auctions obey Benford’s Law. One implication of this is that it is unlikely that these bids are subject to collusion among bidders, or “shilling” on the part of sellers. Parenthetically, we also show that numbers from the naturally occurring Fibonacci and Lucas sequences also obey Benford’s Law.

Keywords: Benford’s Law; auction prices; football; Kuiper test; Watson test (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 C14 C16 D44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2005-05-17
Note: ISSN 1485-6441
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Benford's law and naturally occurring prices in certain ebaY auctions (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vic:vicewp:0505

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