Sudden Termination Auctions - An Experimental Study

The design of online markets has become a major issue due to the capability of operators to implement almost any set of market rules overnight. With this study we contribute to the literature of auction market design by presenting a theoretical and experimental analysis of sudden termination auctions. Our main focus is on the candle auction that has a positive termination probability at any time in the course of the auction. Candle auctions prove to be a much faster, but equally efficient alternative to standard hard close auctions.