A Bates junior has made news by turning the conventional model of online auctions upside down. Elliot Moskow of Coral Springs, Fla., is the chairman and CEO of Pricefalls.com.

Unlike such auction Web sites as eBay, where bidding drives up the prices of items for sale, the selling prices on Moskow's site start high and decrease at regular intervals. What Moskow calls "gravity shopping" is the same idea as a Dutch auction.

"I think the idea is very good. It's a tough market to enter," Dmytro Zhosan, an economics instructor who teaches Moskow in the course "Game Theory," told Lewiston Sun Journal reporter Kathryn Skelton.

Dutch auctions create a fun buying experience. "Instead of a race to the top price where people with less money get shut out early," Skelton wrote in her Feb. 10 article about Moskow, "it's a race to the bottom price for everyone."

"Bidders sit on their hands and wait to buy at a price that's considered a good deal -- but not so good that someone else scoops it up first."

"Aside from classes and homework, I put every waking hour into this that I have," Moskow, an economics major, told the newspaper.

He's running the firm with two members of the Bates class of 2008. Peter Schaefer is chief information officer and executive vice president, and Chad Casey is creative director. Based for now in Lewiston, the team expects to establish a permanent headquarters in Las Vegas -- not an unsuitable choice, given that Pricefalls shoppers are in a sense betting against the clock that they will get their objects of desire.

According to the newspaper, Pricefalls.com had some 102,000 items for sale on Feb. 9. Most items are being sold for now by Pricefalls.com itself, the result of agreements with retailers. "As more individual sellers start logging on and using the service, Pricefalls.com will scale back those arrangements," Skelton wrote.

Moskow estimated that getting the business off the ground has, to date, cost $50,000. A national marketing campaign will be launched by March.

"The term 'Dutch auction' will become like Google or MySpace," Schaefer told the newspaper.