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We elicit the willingness to sell personal data (contact information, Facebook details, preferences) in laboratory experiments, using a BDM and take-it-or-leave-it offers. Our experiments are novel in that (i) the experiments are incentivized, (ii) the focus on privacy issues is salient, and (iii) the use of the data - marketing purposes - is transparent and unambiguous. We find that only a minority of about 10% to 20% of the participants are unwilling to sell personal data, a share which is roughly constant across both the type of personal data and elicitation method. Subjects willing to sell request about € 15 for their contact details and € 19 for Facebook details.

In an experimental setting in which investors can entrust their money to traders, we investigate how compensation schemes affect liquidity provision and asset prices. Investors face a trade-off between risk and return. At the benefit of a potentially higher return, they can entrust their money to a trader. However this investment is risky, as the trader might not be trustworthy. Alternatively, they can opt for a safe but low return. We study how subjects solve this trade-off when traders are either liable for losses or not, and when their bonuses are either capped or not. Limited liability introduces a conflict of interest because it makes traders value the asset more than investors. To limit losses, investors should thus restrict liquidity provision to force traders to trade at a lower price. By contrast, bonus caps make traders value the asset less than investors. This should encourage liquidity provision and decrease prices. In contrast to these predictions, we find that under limited liability investors contribute to asset price bubbles by increasing liquidity provision and that caps fail to tame bubbles. Overall, giving investors skin in the game fosters financial stability.

We report the findings of an experiment designed to study how people learn and make decisions in network games. Network games offer new opportunities to identify learning rules, since on networks (compared to e.g. random matching) more rules differ in terms of their information requirements. Our experimental design enables us to observe both which actions participants choose and which information they consult before making their choices. We use this information to estimate learning types using maximum likelihood methods. There is substantial heterogeneity in learning types. However, the vast majority of our participants' decisions are best characterized by reinforcement learning or (myopic) best-response learning. The distribution of learning types seems fairly stable across contexts. Neither network topology nor the position of a player in the network seem to substantially affect the estimated distribution of learning types.

In this note, we present a novel computerized real effort task based on moving sliders across a screen which overcomes many of the drawbacks of existing real effort tasks. The task was first developed and used by us in Gill and Prowse (forthcoming). We outline the design of our \slider task", describe its advantages compared to existing real effort tasks and provide a statistical analysis of the behavior of subjects undertaking the task. We believe that the task will prove valuable to researchers in designing future real effort experiments, and to this end we provide z-Tree code and guidance to assist researchers wishing to implement the slider task. Keywords; real effort task, slider task, design of laboratory experiments, learning and time effects, individual heterogeneity

The "Hawthorne effect," a concept familiar to all students of social science, has had a profound influence both on the direction and design of research over the past 75 years. The Hawthorne effect is named after a landmark set of studies conducted at the Hawthorne plant in the 1920s. The first and most influential of these studies is known as the "Illumination Experiment." Both academics and popular writers commonly summarize the results as showing that every change in light, even those that made the room dimmer, had the effect of increasing productivity. The data from the illumination experiments, however, were never formally analyzed and were thought to have been destroyed. Our research has uncovered these data. We find that existing descriptions of supposedly remarkable data patterns prove to be entirely fictional. There are, however, hints of more subtle manifestations of a Hawthorne effect in the original data.

This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to assess the ability of an incumbent seller to profitably foreclose a market with exclusive contracts. We use the strategic environment described by Rasmusen, Ramseyer, and Wiley (1991) and Segal and Whinston (2000) where entry is unprofitable when sufficiently many downstream buyers sign exclusive contracts with the incumbent. When discrimination is impossible, the game resembles a stag-hunt (coordination) game in which the buyers' payoffs are endogenously chosen by the incumbent seller. Exclusion occurs when the buyers fail to coordinate on their preferred equilibrium. Two-way non-binding pre-play communication among the buyers lowers the power of exclusive contracts and induces more generous contract terms from the seller. When discrimination and communication are possible, the exclusion rate rises. Divide-and-conquer strategies are observed more frequently when buyers can communicate with each other. Exclusion rates are significantly higher when the buyers' payoffs are endogenously chosen rather than exogenously given. Finally, secret offers are shown to decrease the incumbent's power to profitably exclude.

Although understanding preferences for privacy is of great importance to economists, businesses and politicians little is known about the factors that shape the individual willingness to share personal data. This article provides three experimental studies with a total of 470 participants that help characterizing individual preferences for sharing personal data varying the characteristics of potential recipients. We find that participants’ willingness to share personal data with anonymous recipients decreases with the number of recipients. However, social distance to the recipients and the extent of personal data a single recipient receives do not decrease the willingness to share personal data. Further, we provide a methodological insight by showing that verification of personal data is essential when eliciting privacy preferences.

Women are often less willing than men to compete, even in tasks where there is no gender gap in performance. Also, many people experience competitive contexts as stressful and previous research has documented that men and women sometimes react differently to acute stressors. We use two laboratory experiments to investigate whether factors related to stress can help explain the gender gap in competitiveness. Experiment 1 studies whether stress responses (measured with salivary cortisol and through self-assessment) to taking part in a mandatory competition predict individual willingness to participate in a voluntary competition. We find that while the mandatory competition does increase stress levels, there is no gender difference in this reaction. Cortisol response does not predict willingness to compete for men but is positively and significantly correlated with choosing to enter the voluntary competition for women. In Experiment 2 we exogenously induce stress using the cold-pressor task. We find no causal effect of stress on competitiveness for the sample as a whole and only tentative evidence of a positive effect for women. In summary, even though there are some gender differences in the relation between stress responses and the decision to enter a competition or not, these cannot explain the general gender gap in willingness to compete that is generally found in the literature and which we replicate.

μCap (muCap) is a software package (citeware) for economic experiments enabling experimenters to analyze emotional states of subjects using z-Tree and FaceReader™. μCap is able to create videos of subjects on client computers based on stimuli shown on screen and restrict recording material to relevant time frames. Another feature of μCap is the creation of time stamps in csv format at prespecified screens (or at prespecified points in time) during the experiment, measured on the client computer. The software makes it possible to import these markers into FaceReader™ easily. Until recently, connecting z-Tree and FaceReader™ was only possible using workarounds or by undertaking many successive actions manually. μCap is the first program that significantly simplifies this process with the additional benefit of extremely high precision. This paper describes the usage, underlying principles as well as advantages and limitations of μCap. Furthermore, we give a brief outlook of how μCap can be beneficial in other contexts.

We investigate the relationship between anchoring and the emergence of bubbles in experimental asset markets. We show that setting a visual anchor at the fundamental value (FV) in the first period only is sufficient to eliminate or to significantly reduce bubbles in laboratory asset markets. If no FV-anchor is set, bubble-crash patterns emerge. Our results indicate that bubbles in laboratory environments are primarily sparked in the first period. If prices are initiated around the FV, they stay close to the FV over the entire trading horizon. Our insights can be related to initial public offerings and the interaction between prices set on pre-opening markets and subsequent intra-day price dynamics. 10th February 2015

There is little consensus on whether women are more generous than men, since some research results indicate a higher propensity to giving of female dictators, whilst some others indicate the opposite. Two explanations have been put forward. According to the first one, women are more generous than men and the conflicting results are due to the way preferences are elicited (Eckel and Grossman, 2002), since women are more sensitive to “social cues” and their preferences are more “malleable” (Croson and Gneezy, 2009). According to the second one, the institutional culture and the role women have in society are key elements in shaping gender differences in preferences. In fact, in matrilineal societies (Gong et al.; 2014; Gneezy et al.; 2009), women are self-oriented, more competitive and less generous than men, since they have an important role as economic decision makers in the family and the society. We test these alternative hypotheses running Dictators experiments in Italy, a western country with a matrilineal culture, introducing – at the same time- social influence in the design. We find more support to the hypothesis on the cultural role in shaping preferences, rather than the effects of social influence.

Effort tasks are commonly used to assess individual investment and performance in an experimental setting. Although the tasks used are diverse, they are typically intended to be equivalent as far as they aim to generalize beyond the specific task. We compare an induced value effort task and three real effort tasks in a contest game. Results show that there is no equivalence across tasks in relation to how risk attitude, anxiety and gender predict performance.

In an experimental setting in which investors can entrust their money to traders, we investigate how compensation schemes affect liquidity provision and asset prices. Investors face a trade-off between risk and return. At the benefit of a potentially higher return, they can entrust their money to a trader. However this investment is risky, as the trader might not be trustworthy. Alternatively, they can opt for a safe but low return. We study how subjects solve this trade-off when traders are either liable for losses or not, and when their bonuses are either capped or not. Limited liability introduces a conflict of interest because it makes traders value the asset more than investors. To limit losses, investors should thus restrict liquidity provision to force traders to trade at a lower price. By contrast, bonus caps make traders value the asset less than investors. This should encourage liquidity provision and decrease prices. In contrast to these predictions, we find that under limited liability investors contribute to asset price bubbles by increasing liquidity provision and that caps fail to tame bubbles. Overall, giving investors skin in the game fosters financial stability.

Real-effort experiments are frequently used when examining a response to incentives. For any particular real-effort task to be well-suited for such an exercise, subjects’ cost for exerting effort must, for the range of incentives considered, result in an interior effort choice. The popular slider task in Gill and Prowse (2012) has been characterized as satisfying this requirement, and the task has been increasingly used to investigate the response to changes in both monetary and nonmonetary incentives. However, despite its increasing use, a simple between-subject examination of the slider task’s response to incentives has not been conducted. We provide such an examination with three different piece-rate incentives: half a cent, two cents, and eight cents per slider completed. We find that participants in the three treatments completed on average 26.1, 26.6 and 27.3 sliders per round, respectively. The one-slider increase in observed performance is small, not only relative to the sixteen-fold increase in the incentives, but also relative to the observed heterogeneity across subjects, rates of learning, and even idiosyncratic variation. Our paper cautions that the slider task will be underpowered for uncovering a response to incentives in between-subject designs.

In tort litigation, delayed settlement or impasse imposes high costs on the parties and society. Litigation institutions might influence social welfare by affecting the likelihood of out-of-court settlement and the potential injurers’ investment in product safety. An appropriate design of litigation institutions and tort reform requires good knowledge of the factors that affect litigants’ behavior. The combination of theoretical and experimental law and economics, which represents the cornerstone of the application of the scientific method, might enhance our understanding of the effects of litigation institutions and tort reform on settlement and deterrence. We evaluate the interaction between theoretical and experimental law and economics in the study of tort litigation institutions. Special attention is devoted to liability, litigation and tort reform institutions, and behavioral factors that might affect impasse. Our analysis suggests a productive interaction between theoretical and experimental law and economics. In particular, findings from experimental economics work on litigation institutions indicate the presence and robustness of cognitive biases, and provide evidence of the effects of litigants’ biased beliefs on the likelihood of impasse. These findings have motivated the construction of new economic models of litigation involving more empirically-relevant assumptions about litigants’ beliefs. As a result of the application of the scientific method, the contributions of law and economics to the design of legal institutions might be strengthened.

Although understanding preferences for privacy is of great importance to economists, businesses and politicians little is known about the factors that shape the individual willingness to share personal data. This article provides three experimental studies with a total of 470 participants that help characterizing individual preferences for sharing personal data varying the characteristics of potential recipients. We find that participants’ willingness to share personal data with anonymous recipients decreases with the number of recipients. However, social distance to the recipients and the extent of personal data a single recipient receives do not decrease the willingness to share personal data. Further, we provide a methodological insight by showing that verification of personal data is essential when eliciting privacy preferences. published

We show that socio-economic status (SES) is a powerful predictor of many facets of a child's personality. The facets of personality we investigate encompass time preferences, risk preferences, and altruism, as well as crystallized and fluid IQ. We measure a family's SES by the mother's and father's average years of education and household income. Our results show that children from families with higher SES are more patient, tend to be more altruistic and less likely to be risk seeking, and score higher on IQ tests. We also discuss potential pathways through which SES could affect the formation of a child's personality by documenting that many dimensions of a child's environment differ systematically by SES: parenting style, quantity and quality of time parents spend with their children, the mother's IQ and economic preferences, a child's initial conditions at birth, and family structure. Finally, we use panel data to show that the relationship between SES and personality is fairly stable over time at age 7 to 10. Personality profiles that vary systematically with SES might offer an explanation for social immobility.

Procedural fairness plays a prominent role in the social discourse concerning the marketplace in particular, and social institutions in general. Random procedures are a simple case, and they have found application in several important social allocation decisions. We investigate random procedures in the laboratory. We find that an unbiased random procedure is an acceptable substitute for an unbiased allocation: similar patterns of acceptance and rejection result when either is inserted as a feasible proposal in a sequential battle-of-the-sexes. We also find that unbiasedness, known to be a crucial characteristic of allocation fairness, is important to procedural fairness: in the context of a random offer game, a biased outcome is more readily accepted when chosen by an unbiased random draw than by one that is biased. Procedural fairness is conceptually different than allocation fairness or attribution-based behavior, and none of the current models of fairness and reciprocity captures our results. Post hoc extension of one of these models (ERC) suggests that a deeper understanding of procedural fairness requires further investigation of competing fairness norms.

This study is directly motivated by the results of Eckartz et al (2012). Subjects exerted suprisingly high efforts irrespectively of how they were compensated. This paper discusses a number of potential explanations and then it will focus on two of them: first, subjects might exert effort simply because they enjoy working on the tasks. Second, subjects might exert effort because they feel obliged to do so or because they do not have opportunity costs of working. These questions are crucial to better understand the robustness of experimental results and also to be eventually able to transfer the results to the world outside the laboratory. We replicate our earlier results: in the baseline treatment we do not find effects of incentive schemes on the output. Decreasing the attractiveness of the tasks, we also do not observe differences between the incentive schemes. When we introduce, however, a paid outside option, the efforts are higher in the performance-dependent pay treatments than under flat payment. The size of the effect differs between the tasks, the direction is, however, the same.

We investigate the relationship between anchoring and the emergence of bubbles in experimental asset markets. We show that setting a visual anchor at the fundamental value (FV) in the first period only is sufficient to eliminate or to significantly reduce bubbles in laboratory asset markets. If no FV-anchor is set, bubble-crash patterns emerge. Our results indicate that bubbles in laboratory environments are primarily sparked in the first period. If prices are initiated around the FV, they stay close to the FV over the entire trading horizon. Our insights can be related to initial public offerings and the interaction between prices set on pre-opening markets and subsequent intra-day price dynamics.

We summarize our two sets of controlled experiments designed to see whether single-sex classes within co-educational environments modify students' risk-taking attitudes. In Booth and Nolen (2012b), subjects are in school years 10 and 11, while in Booth et al. (2014), they are first-year university students randomly assigned to single-sex and co-educational classes. Both studies show that while on average females are significantly less likely than men to make risky choices, on exposure to single-sex environments they behave the same as the males. Thus, part of the observed gender difference in behaviour under uncertainty found in previous studies might reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits. (JEL codes: C9, C91, C92, J16, D01, D80, J16, J24)

We investigate the relationship between anchoring and the emergence of bubbles in experimental asset markets. We show that setting a visual anchor at the fundamental value (FV) in the first period only is sufficient to eliminate or to significantly reduce bubbles in laboratory asset markets. If no FV-anchor is set, bubble-crash patterns emerge. Our results indicate that bubbles in laboratory environments are primarily sparked in the first period. If prices are initiated around the FV, they stay close to the FV over the entire trading horizon. Our insights can be related to initial public offerings and the interaction between prices set on pre-opening markets and subsequent intra-day price dynamics.

Economists are increasingly turning to the experimental method as a means to estimate causal effects. By using randomization to identify key treatment effects, theories previously viewed as untestable are now scrutinized, efficacy of public policies are now more easily verified, and stakeholders can swiftly add empirical evidence to aid their decision-making. This study provides an overview of experimental methods in economics, with a special focus on developing an economic theory of generalizability. Given that field experiments are in their infancy, our secondary focus pertains to a discussion of the various parameters that they identify, and how they add to scientific knowledge. We conclude that until we conduct more field experiments that build a bridge between the lab and the naturally-occurring settings of interest we cannot begin to make strong conclusions empirically on the crucial question of generalizability from the lab to the field.

Many important decisions are made under stress and they often involve risky alternatives. There has been ample evidence that stress influences decision making in cognitive as well as in affective domains, but still very little is known about whether individual attitudes to risk change with exposure to acute stress. To directly evaluate the causal effect of stress on risk attitudes, we adopt an experimental approach in which we randomly expose participants to a psychosocial stressor in the form of a standard laboratory stress-induction procedure: the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups. Risk preferences are elicited using an incentive compatible task, which has been previously shown to predict risk-oriented behavior out of the laboratory. Using three different measures (salivary cortisol levels, heart rate and multidimensional mood questionnaire scores), we show that stress was successfully induced on the treatment group. Our main result is that acute psychosocial stress significantly increases risk aversion. The effect is mainly driven by males; men in our control group are less risk-averse than women, which is a standard result in the literature, but this difference almost disappears when under psychosocial stress.

There is strong evidence that people exploit their bargaining power in competitive markets but not in bilateral bargaining situations. There is also strong evidence that people exploit free-riding opportunities in voluntary cooperation games. Yet, when they are given the opportunity to punish free-riders, stable cooperation is maintained although punishment is costly for those who punish. This paper asks whether there is a simple common principle that can explain this puzzling evidence. We show that if some people care about equity the puzzles can be resolved. It turns out that the economic environment determines whether the fair types or the selfish types dominate equilibrium behavior.

We use experimental data to investigate what subjects have learned after participating in an economic experiment for many periods. At the end of our experiments subjects are given another experiment to perform which functions like a surprise quiz since they had not been informed about its existence before. The results of this surprise-quiz round, along with the time-series of their responses before the quiz, allow us to judge what they have learned. We find that depending on the manner in which subjects are paid, they attempt to learn different aspects of the experimental task and perform differently. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C91, D83.

Economists are increasingly turning to the experimental method as a means to estimate causal effects. By using randomization to identify key treatment effects, theories previously viewed as untestable are now scrutinized, efficacy of public policies are now more easily verified, and stakeholders can swiftly add empirical evidence to aid their decision-making. This study provides an overview of experimental methods in economics, with a special focus on developing an economic theory of generalizability. Given that field experiments are in their infancy, our secondary focus pertains to a discussion of the various parameters that they identify, and how they add to scientific knowledge. We conclude that until we conduct more field experiments that build a bridge between the lab and the naturally-occurring settings of interest we cannot begin to make strong conclusions empirically on the crucial question of generalizability from the lab to the field.

Vertical restraints have been subject of lively policy and academic discussions. Scholars associated with the Chicago School challenged early foreclosure doctrines by arguing that vertical restraints primarily reflected efficiency considerations. More recently, industrial organization economists have used the tools of game theory and information economics to showth at these business practices might actually serve anticompetitive purposes. The influence of the new economic theories on antitrust policies has been limited by the complexity of the models and the scarcity of empirical evidence. Experimental law and economics might advance the knowledge of the factors that affect the anticompetitive effects of vertical restraints. Hence, it might strengthen the contributions of academic work to the design and implementation of antitrust policies. This chapter is intended to contribute to the discussion of the exclusionary effects of vertical restraints, and the role of experimental law and economics in antitrust law. Special attention is devoted to vertical integration, exclusive dealing contracts, and tying and bundling practices. Although the experimental literature on exclusionary vertical restraints is relatively recent, the findings from these studies provide important insights. First, this research indicates that vertical restraints might indeed be used as market foreclosure mechanisms. Second, this work identifies previously non-modeled factors that might influence the effects of these business practices. My analysis underscores the importance of combining experimental and behavioral observation with theoretical modeling.

The aim of this work is to analyze tax evasion as a factor that potentially affects internal control of firms as an application of the Chen and Chu’s model (2005). For this purpose an experimental approach was employed. Treatments varied depending on whether agents were assumed to be risk-neutral or risk-averse. According to the gift-exchange game (Fehr et al., 1993), results show a positive relationship between wages offered by principal and efforts provided by agents. In general, higher wages lead to more costly effort provision. However, when evasion and risk aversion are introduced in the analysis individuals show opportunistic behaviors and they seem to be less willing to cooperate for the wealth of the firm.

We investigate the stability of individual behavior in a repeated public good experiment over time by reinviting subjects back to the lab up to four times in one week intervals. We exclude effects due to learning about others' behavior and reputation building by employing a non-learning and non-reputation environment: subjects are neither told nor paid their earnings until the very end of their participation and thus deprived of any feedback information and strategic possibilities to signal their intentions. This experimental design thus leaves unstable preferences as the most likely source for unstable behavior. We observe that, in the first wave of the experiment, subjects contribute to the public good in accordance to other-regarding preferences, but become more selfish in the latter waves of the experiment and consequently contributions to the public good decrease over time. The decline is mainly caused by initially conditional cooperators who turn into free riders over the course of the experiment., Working papers series, ISSN 2628-1724, 2012, Heft 2

We examine whether religious priming can induce more truthful preference revelation in valuation research. Using induced value second price Vickrey auctions in both hypothetical and non-hypothetical contexts, our results suggest that religious priming can indeed induce more truthful bidding and eliminate hypothetical bias in hypothetical contexts. In non-hypothetical contexts where there are real economic incentives, religious priming induces similar truthful bidding as the absence of religious priming, implying that the use of real economic incentives is sufficient in producing truthful valuations. Our findings have significant implications for the use of religious priming in stated preference or contingent valuation studies.

This paper introduces a model of social preferences featuring a single parameter representing an individual's disposition to share resources with others. The parameter reacts to observed behavior of others in a clearly defined manner. Therefore, the model allows the numerical analysis of reciprocal interaction. Based on evolutionary concepts, the model is characterized by a very basic utility maximization condition and it is consistent with and often predictive of the results of a multitude of different behavioral games and phenomenon.

A frequently cited argument against the use of market-based instruments to provide public goods is that they diminish our sense of responsibility to be good citizens. In this paper, we report on the results of a laboratory experiment designed to explore the idea that this distrust stems from the ability of some members of society to contribute to the public good with money instead of time or effort even when the level of total contributions is held constant. In our experiments, subjects complete lab tasks as a contribution to a public good--carbon emission reductions. We look at how the number of lab tasks completed by subjects changes when their peers take advantage of an offer to buy out, i.e., contribute money in lieu of effort. We find that on average subjects reduce the number of completed tasks when their peers buy out. However, the aggregate result masks significant heterogeneity across individual responses. Those who choose not to buy out despite its expected profitability have no response to the treatment while those for whom it would not be profitable to buy out register large reductions in effort contributions. The magnitude of these responses is increasing in the share of the group that accepts the buyout offer, suggesting that it is the act of peers buying out rather than the simple introduction of monetary incentives that is the source of the effect.

Recent papers hypothesize that an asymmetry in regret motivates aggressive bidding in laboratory first-price auctions. Subjects emphasize potential earnings foregone from being outbid. Proposed motivators of this asymmetry include the one-to-one relationship in the auction between winning and positive earnings and the ex-post knowledge that bidders who do not win the auction know they earned less than the winning bidder. We design a novel implementation of the first-price auction environment in which these characteristics are not present, while leaving unchanged the expected-earnings maximizing bidding strategy against any fixed beliefs about the bidding behavior of others. Bidding is significantly less aggressive in this treatment. These findings support the hypothesis that aggressive bidding is motivated in part by features of the protocol for incentivizing subjects which are not essential to the auction environment.

This paper investigates the processing of repeated complex information. The focus of this study is, whether additional information and the introduction of performance-based payoffs have an influence on judgement. Therefore, an experiment is designed to investigate the degree of precision and quality of interval estimates. The data shows that providing additional information decreases the precision of stated estimates, while it improves its quality. The same result is obtained, when performance-based payoffs are introduced to an otherwise hypothetical decision environment. That means, while the variation in the treatment variables increase the quality of the estimate, the precision as a reflection of the decision makers confidence is reduced.

International audience; We describe a multiproduct barter trading experiment in which students exchange real goods in an open market based on their own personal preference. The experiment is designed for simulating a pure exchange market in order to demonstrate the role of money and its functions in real economies by showing the limitations and inefficiencies of the traditional barter economy. In addition, the simulation is very effective in highlighting some of the key features that an object that serves as money needs to possess in order to function as an efficient medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value.

People tend to think by analogies. We investigate whether thinking-by-analogy matters for investors’ willingness to pay for a risky asset in a laboratory experiment. We find that thinking-by-analogy has a strong influence when the assets in question have similar (but not identical) payoffs. The hypothesis of thinking-by-analogy or coarse thinking clearly outperforms other hypotheses including the hypothesis of arbitrage-free or rational pricing. When the similarity between the payoffs is reduced, the risk neutral hypothesis outperforms the hypothesis of thinking-by-analogy. Regardless of the similarity between the payoffs, the arbitrage-free or rational pricing remains the hypothesis with the worst performance.

We develop, both theoretically and experimentally, a stereotypical environment that allows for co-ordination breakdown, leading to a bank run. Three depositors are located at the nodes of a network and have to decide whether to keep their funds deposited or to withdraw. One of the depositors has immediate liquidity needs, whereas the other two depositors do not. Depositors act sequentially and observe others’ actions only if connected by the network. Theoretically, a link connecting the first two depositors to decide is sufficient to avoid a bank run. However, our experimental evidence shows that subjects’choice is not a¤ected by the existence of the link per se. Instead, being observed and the particular action that is observed determine subjects’choice. Our results highlight the importance of initial decisions in the emergence of a bank run. In particular, Bayesian analysis reveals that subjects clearly depart from predicted behavior when observing a withdrawal.

We investigate the influence of overconfidence and risk aversion on individual financial decision making in the experimental asset markets of the Smith, Suchanek and Williams (1988) type, with no informational asymmetries. Subjects, based on their pre-experimental overconfidence scores, were assigned to the two types of markets: least overconfident subjects formed five “rational” markets and most overconfident subjects formed five “overconfident” markets. The asset market experiment was followed by post hoc risk aversion measurement. Our results revealed that in the suggested setting, performance and trading activity were overconfidence dependent only for female participants. Mistakes in price forecasting, that are negatively correlated with overconfidence, could partially account for the increase in trading activity and losses. In the decreased sample differences in individual outcomes were overconfidence and not risk aversion driven.

In this paper influence of behavioral factors (overconfidence and risk aversion) on financial decision making of economic subjects is analyzed. For this purpose two kinds of experiments were conducted: asset market and risk aversion experiments. In conducted asset market sessions subjects, based on their pre-experimental overconfidence scores, were assigned to two types of markets: the least overconfident ones formed five “rational” markets and the most overconfident ones formed five “overconfident” markets. Data collected from ten experimental sessions revealed that individual performance and trade activity were overconfidence dependent. Even small variations in miscalibration among players of the same “type”, comprising each of the asset markets, were sufficient to cause this effect. In the second part of experiment, post hoc assessment of risk aversion was implemented in a sample of former participants of the asset market experiment (32 persons). The presented evidence suggests that risk aversion was not among the factors that had influence on individual engagement in trade activity or performance. It was concluded that in the sample, for which risk aversion measurements were obtained, experimental market outcomes were overconfidence and not risk aversion driven.

Experimental economics represents a strong growth industry. In the past several decades the method has expanded beyond intellectual curiosity, now meriting consideration alongside the other more traditional empirical approaches used in economics. Accompanying this growth is an influx of new experimenters who are in need of straightforward direction to make their designs more powerful. This study provides several simple rules of thumb that researchers can apply to improve the efficiency of their experimental designs. We buttress these points by including empirical examples from the literature.

We study (anti-) coordination problems in networks in a laboratory experiment. Partici- pants interact with their neighbours in a fixed network to play a bilateral (anti-) coordination game. Our main treatment variable is the extent to which players are heterogeneous in the number of connections (neighbors) they have. Other network characteristics are held constant across treatments. We find the following results. Heterogeneity in the number of connections dramatically improves the rate of successful coordination. In addition, even though there is a multiplicity of Nash equilibria theoretically, a very sharp selection is observed empirically: the most connected player can impose her preferred Nash equilibrium almost always and observed Nash equilibria are such that all links are coordinated. As a second treatment variation we let agents decide endogenously on the amount of information they would like to have and find that local (endogenous) information is equally efficient in ensuring successful coordination as full information. We provide an intuitive explanation of these facts which is supported by our data.

Experimental Economics The disciplines of social science, with the notable exception of psychology, have traditionally steered clear of laboratory. The field of economics, and in particular econometrics, has amassed an imposing arsenal of quantitative and statistical methods for analyzing observational data in assessing economic theory and in making causal inferences. More recently, laboratory experiments carried out under controlled conditions and randomized field experiments carried out under natural conditions have gained some currency as complementary approaches. Falk and Heckman (p. 535 ) review the strengths and shortfalls of these recent developments.

Harbaugh (1998a) has shown theoretically that charities can increase the size of donations by publicly acknowledging their donors using categories. In a complementary paper,using the data on the donations given by 146 lawyers to their almamater law school, Harbaugh (1998b) provided empirical support for this theoretical assertion. Essentially, being acknowledged in categories gives donors some prestige benefits. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the impact of various reporting plans as described in Harbaugh (1998a and 1998b) on the behavior of donors. Our results show that, although the category reporting plan has no significant impact on the size of donations when compared to the exact reporting plan and the no reporting plan, it does signi�ficantly alter the charitable behavior of donors. We show that the presence of a category reporting plan induces the clustering of donations on the lower boundaries of categories, which suggests that donors are motivated by prestige. We also discover that in some circumstances the presence of prestige benefi�ts crowds out the warm glow motive for giving.

We conduct a two-phase laboratory experiment, separated by several weeks. In the first phase, we conduct urn games intended to measure ambiguity aversion on a representative population of undergraduate students. In the second phase, we invite the students back with four different solicitation treatments, varying in the ambiguity of information regarding the task and the payout of the laboratory experiment. We find that those who return do not differ from the overall pool with respect to their ambiguity version. However, no solicitation treatment generates a representative sample. The ambiguous task treatment drives away the ambiguity averse disproportionally, and the detailed task treatment draws in the ambiguity averse disproportionally.

In this paper we explore the relationship between the individual’s preference for cooperation and the establishment of cooperative norms. Our aim is to provide an experimental test of the evolutionary hypothesis (see Carpenter, 2004, Fehr and Gachter 2002; Gintis 2000; Boyd, Bowles, Gintis and Richerson 2003; Bowles and Gintis 2004), according to which individuals are prepared to punish defectors in experimental social dilemma games because they want to enforce a social (“altruistic”) norm which may conduce to increasing their future payoffs, as in the case of sanctions against free riding behaviour. According to this line of research , the high levels of cooperation we observe in our societies can, therefore, be strictly related to the establishment of social norms which are able to enforce and maintain cooperation in the long run. We study the results of two experiments in which the individuals decided both whether to participate in a common project and the institutional rule according to which the profits of the project had to be shared among each of the participants in the group. They could choose between 1) a regime where gains were shared equally, regardless of individuals’ contributions and without sanctions and rewards (System A); 2) a regime where individuals were paid according to their marginal contribution, but the profits of the investments were lower than in the other contexts (System B); finally 3) a regime in which gains were shared equally (as in System A), but individuals were allowed to punish (and\or reward) free riding (cooperative) behaviours as in Sefton, Shupp and Walker (2007). Before the experiments took place, our subjects were required to fill a questionnaire composed of four sections, where their attitude to cooperate and their opinions on civic values and free riding behaviours were thoroughly explored. We then monitored the behaviour of potential free riders and cooperators in the game and their institutional choices. Our results partly contradict the evolutionary hypothesis in as much as System A and B received the largest shares of votes in almost all rounds and they were voted by free riders and cooperators alike. Thus, most individuals do not like sanctions (incentives) against defectors and free riders (cooperators), and their institutional preferences do not seem to be related to their willingness to cooperate. The inspection of individual data, however, reveals some interesting points. In fact, we can assert that System C was mostly chosen by cooperative individuals in response to observed free riding behaviour. Furthermore, when a cooperative individual chose C, she would tend to punish free riders and reward cooperators. Our conclusion is that, as far as the institutional choices are concerned, beside the profit motivations underlined in the evolutionary hypothesis, the ethical and cultural unobserved individual preferences play an important role. There is a number of individuals (limited in our experiments, ranging between 15 and 30 per cent of the entire population) who see cooperation as the “right” thing to do, and therefore are prepared to implement institutional rules that may favour this collective outcome. Most people in our experiments did not share these same values.

Some economists believe that neuroeconomists threatens the theory of economics. Glenn Harrison’s paper “Neuroeconomics: A Critical Reconsideration” (2008) provides some support for this view, though some of the points he makes are somewhat disguised. The field of neuroeconomics is barely into its teenage years; and it is trying to do what? Criticize and redesign the field of economics developed over hundreds of years? But that is not what neuroeconomics is trying to do, in spite of all the efforts of some economists trying to place it into that shoebox (see the argument in great detail in Andrew Caplin, Andrew Schotter 2008). Neuroeconomics is a Mendelian-Economics of sort; it is a science that is able to generate data by fixing the environment to some degree, varying a single independent variable for its affects, and is able to see each individual’s choices from initiation of the decision-making process to its outcome. Mainstream (standard) economics, on the other hand, looks at the average of the outcomes of many individuals and proposes how people chose those outcomes, retroactively. The two fields, neuroeconomics and standard economics, are evaluating two sides of the same coin: one with and the other without ceteris paribus; they are not in conflict with one another.

Opinion is divided on whether it is better to have a single world  money or variable exchange rates.  Pope, Selten and von Hagen (2003)  propose that fresh light would be shed via an analysis that allows  for seven complexity impacts on the exchange rate that are  underplayed (where not entirely absent) from current analyses: 1) the  role of official sector, including its central bank; 2) the numerous  official and private sector goals; 3) the disparate degrees of market  power of different sorts of private agents; 4) the documentation that  essentially all shocks to the exchange rate are generated by human  decisions; 5) the non-maximising heuristics that in the complex  economy agents use; 6) heterogenous beliefs.  This paper analyses a  closed form game theoretic solution of version 1 of a model that  combines impacts 1 to 4 with the conventional finance assumption that  all agents maximise their utility.  Impact 1) precludes private  agents being able to destabilise the exchange rate against the  cooperation of the central banks required by the game theoretic  solution.  Impact 4) excludes random events and other exogenous  shocks such as meteors falling from the sky.  The rational maximising  assumption in turn precludes all other sources of shocks and thus any  need for a variable exchange rate to equilibrate after shocks.  We  then modify version 1 of our model substituting for the maximising  assumption impacts 5 to 7, impacts that allow shocks from humans to  be consistently incorporated.  We do so by means of an experimental  investigation which indicates that central bankers less than fully  cooperate, leaving scope for private speculators to support their  preferred currency.  From the viewpoint of the game theoretic  equilibrium, the resultant exchange rate changes render equilibrium  unspecified.  A single world money avoids disruptive exchange rate  changes from less than fully cooperating central banks, exchange rate  changes caused by central bank conflicts and that cannot be  classified as equilibrating.

There has been a dramatic increase in the use of experimental methods in the past two decades. An oft-cited reason for this rise in popularity is that experimental methods provide the necessary control to estimate treatment effects in isolation of other confounding factors. We examine the relevance of experimental findings from laboratory settings that abstract from the field context of the task that theory purports to explain. Using common value auction theory as our guide, we identify naturally occurring settings in which one can test the theory. In our treatments the subjects are not picked at random, as in lab experiments with student subjects, but are deliberately identified by their trading roles in the natural field setting. We find that experienced agents bidding in familiar roles do not fall prey to the winner's curse. Yet, when experienced agents are observed bidding in an unfamiliar role, we find that they frequently fall prey to the winner's curse. We conclude that the theory predicts field behavior well when one is able to identify naturally occurring field counterparts to the key theoretical conditions.

Laboratory experiments have been used extensively in economics in the past several decades to lend both positive and normative insights into a myriad of important economic issues. This study discusses a related approach that has increasingly grown in prominence of late--field experiments. I argue that field experiments serve as a useful bridge between data generated in the lab and empirical studies using naturally-occurring data. In discussing this relationship, I highlight that field experiments can yield important insights into economic theory and provide useful guidance to policymakers. I also draw attention to an important methodological contribution of field experiments: they provide an empirical account of behavioral principles that are shared across different domains. In this regard, at odds with conventional wisdom, I argue that representativeness of the environment, rather than representative of the sampled population, is the most crucial variable in determining generalizability of results for a large class of experimental laboratory games.