According to Herodotus, in Babylon auctions of women for marriage were held annually. The Babylonian Marriage Market, Edwin Long, 1875.Īuctions have a long history, having been recorded as early as 500 BC. Indeed, before the 17th century only a few sporadic auctions were held. In practice, both haggling and sale by set-price have been significantly more common. For most of history, auctions have been a relatively uncommon way to negotiate the exchange of goods and commodities. The word "auction" is derived from the Latin auctum, the supine of augeō, "I increase". These contexts are antiques, paintings, rare collectibles, expensive wines, commodities, livestock, radio spectrum, used cars, online advertising, even emission trading and many more. Īuctions were and are applied for trade in diverse contexts.
An auctioneer may announce prices, bidders may call out their bids themselves or have a proxy call out a bid on their behalf, or bids may be submitted electronically with the highest current bid publicly displayed. Participants bid openly against one another, with each subsequent bid required to be higher than the previous bid. The open ascending price auction is arguably the most common form of auction in use throughout history.
The branch of economic theory dealing with auction types and participants' behavior in auctions is called auction theory. Some exceptions to this definition exist and are described in the section about different types. An American auctioneer using auction chant at a livestock auction, November 2010Īn auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder.
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