About 1700 MBA students at the Wharton School must buy their seats for all elective courses in each term. The market for seats is organized as a multiple round call auction and thus provides data for a field experiment in markets. All participants can buy and sell seats. We examine bidding behavior, information aggregation and the final allocations using data from the previous five semesters along with demographic data about the traders. Results replicate results from lab market experiments, including indicate the existence of "bubbles" for popular classes.

Co-author Rachel Croson