Auction reserve prices on a digital platform

Last registered on September 28, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Auction reserve prices on a digital platform
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0019817
Initial registration date
September 25, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
September 28, 2026, 9:51 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Samuel Higbee
Affiliation
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Joshua Higbee
PI Affiliation
PI Name
Ali Hortacsu
PI Affiliation

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2026-09-24
End date
2026-11-19
Keywords
Other
Additional Keywords
Auctions, industrial organization, market design, field experiment
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
We study the effect of reserve prices on clicks, bids, prices, and revenue in a digital auction platform. Search queries on a digital platform are randomly assigned to one of eight reserve price policies. The status quo reserve price policy receives 93\% of queries; each of seven alternatives receives 1\%. These alternatives vary around the status quo and a reserve price policy estimated from historical data. The experiment lasts for four weeks. The study will examine whether the alternative reserve price policies increase revenue, and how consumer activity, bidding behavior, and quoted prices respond to the reserve price.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Higbee, Joshua, Samuel Higbee and Ali Hortacsu. 2026. "Auction reserve prices on a digital platform." AEA RCT Registry. September 28. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.19817-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Each query contains several auctions. The auction has a secret reserve price, which may depend on query and item characteristics. The intervention sets the reserve price policy mapping query and item characteristics to the reserve price used for all auctions in the query.
Intervention Start Date
2026-09-24
Intervention End Date
2026-10-22

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Revenue per query
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Clicks per query, submitted bid, log quoted unit price, number of bidders per auction after reserve price filtering
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
7% of queries are assigned independently to one of seven alternative reserve price policies, and 93% of queries are assigned to the status quo reserve price policy. The experiment lasts for four weeks. All reserve prices on this platform are secret. Bidders are informed of how many queries they miss due to a bid below the reserve price.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
By computer through the platform's software
Randomization Unit
Query
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
Approximately 100 million queries over four weeks, depending on realized traffic.
Sample size: planned number of observations
For revenue, approximately 100 million queries. For bids and prices, we will use all submitted bidder-item records within each query. For bidder counts, we will use all item records within a query that are subject to the auction mechanism.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Approximately 1 million queries for each treatment arm, 93 million queries for the control arm.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
University of Chicago SBS-IRB
IRB Approval Date
2026-06-26
IRB Approval Number
IRB26-0791
Analysis Plan

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