SELLING "MONEY" ON EBAY: A FIELD STUDY OF SURPLUS DIVISION

We study the division of trade surplus in a natural field experiment conducted on German eBay. Acting as a seller, we offer Amazon gift cards with face values of up to 500 Euro. A random selection of buyers, the subjects of our experiment, make price offers according to the rules of eBay. Using a novel decomposition method, we infer the offered shares of trade surplus from the data and find that the average share proposed to the seller amounts to about 30%. Additionally, we document: (i) insignificant effects of the stake size; (ii) poor use of strategically relevant public information; and (iii) differences in behaviour between East and West German subjects.