Ebay auctions of presidential hopeful's memorabilia, fall 2015

Campaign memorabilia have been a part of presidential elections from the beginning; buying and selling them on eBay is a more recent development. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the determinants of the number of bids and the final sales price of campaign memorabilia offered on eBay for auctions that closed during the fall of 2015.  This early stage of the election is characterized by a comparatively large number of candidates, memorabilia being offered on eBay for Trump, Clinton, Sanders, Carson, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul (in order of popularity) and for a number of other candidates in smaller numbers.  The primary research question is whether data taken from electronic prediction markets explains the variability in auction results after the standard explanatory variables are considered.  These are the minimum bid, number of bids, shipping and handling, feedback ratings, the buy-it-now option, and the type of item being auctioned.  The prediction data is from David Rothschild’s PredictWise site, which is in turn constructed from other electronic market sites.  (See Rothschild, David. 2015. "Combining Forecasts for Elections: Accurate, Relevant, and Timely." International Journal of Forecasting 31 (3): 952-964.)  The site gives a prediction for a given candidate winning the nomination, the general election, and the “derived market price” of a one dollar wager on the candidate winning the general election.  We may also investigate the auction closing date as compared to debate dates.  Anticipated results include whether the electronic variables affect the final selling price directly, through the number of bids, or both.  A similar investigation will be done for consumers’ willingness to pay.