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Emergence of power-law behaviors in online auctions

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Book cover The Application of Econophysics

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Summary

We downloaded all online-auction bidding histories closing on a single day on eBay, including 264,073 auctioned items, involved by 384,058 distinct agents, finding emerging behaviors in electronic biddings. The data analysis indicates that the total number of bids placed in a single category and the number of distinct auctions frequented by a given agent follow power-law distributions, implying that a few agents are responsible for a significant fraction of the total bidding activity on the online market. To confirm the validity of our findings in different markets and time spans, we collected the data over a one year period from eBay’s Korean partner auction.co.kr, and confirmed the findings obtained from the eBay data. This domination of online auctions by a few unusually active minorities may be a generic feature of all online mercantile processes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics and Center for Theoretical Physics, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-747, Korea

    B. Kahng & I. Yang

  2. Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Taejon, Korea

    H. Jeong

  3. Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA

    A.-L. Barabási

Authors
  1. B. Kahng
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  2. I. Yang
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  3. H. Jeong
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  4. A.-L. Barabási
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., 3-14-13 Higashi-Gotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, 141-0022, Japan

    Hideki Takayasu (Senior Researcher) (Senior Researcher)

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© 2004 Springer Japan

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Kahng, B., Yang, I., Jeong, H., Barabási, AL. (2004). Emergence of power-law behaviors in online auctions. In: Takayasu, H. (eds) The Application of Econophysics. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-53947-6_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-53947-6_28

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Tokyo

  • Print ISBN: 978-4-431-67961-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-4-431-53947-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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