All of these factors play a part in auction strategy, and so this section can only provide an overview with a few assorted general ideas. Those readers wishing to know more are invited to read the bibliography which contains excellent references, and those references in turn point to other more technical papers. It is safe to make a few general remarks. Buyers really do bid differently depending upon the rules of an auction, and it is worth understanding the rules of an auction thoroughly. In fact, the one piece of information available to all is the rules.
Economists use a framework called game theory to think about auction behavior.
Using game theory economists examine rational behavior and decisions made in varying conditions. A seller, on the one hand, is faced with choosing an auction type, and so he must predict the behavior of bidders. On the other hand, a bidder tries to predict the behavior of the other bidders. Each bidder makes an estimate of his own value of the object and also an estimate of what others will bid on it. Good bidding is often the result of correct predictions about the behavior of others and sometimes that means guessing the extent of someone else's information correctly.