Investors systematically deviate from rationality when making financial decisions, yet the mechanisms responsible for these deviations have not been identified. Using event-related fMRI, we examined whether anticipatory neural activity would predict optimal and suboptimal choices in a financial...

In a laboratory experiment, subjects played ten two-person 3x3 constant sum games and stated beliefs about the frequencies of play by their opponents. Contrary to previous experimental evidence, game-theoretical predictions work well: 80% of actions coincided with Nash equilibrium, subjects were...

We examine a logical decision problem, the "Monty Hall Dilemma," in which a large portion of sophisticated subjects insist on an apparently wrong solution. Although a substantial literature examines the structure of this problem, we argue that the extant analyses have not recognized the...

We study search behavior in a generalized "secretary problem" environment in which consumers search sequentially for the best alternative from a known and finite set of multi-attribute alternatives. In contrast to most previous studies, we make no distributional assumptions about the quality of...

We perform a further experiment to check the robustness of the main result in Rey Biel (2005) to sequential play. We find that Equilibrium predictions work even better when the same games are played sequentially: 85% of first movers choose the Equilibrium strategy and 85% of second movers best...

One of the most robust findings in experimental analysis in economics is that subjects often display a large discrepancy between the dollar value they are willing to accept in order to sell an item (WTA) and the dollar value they are willing to pay to purchase it (WTP). We suggest that often...

Principals can attempt to get agents to perform certain actions preferable to the principal by using ex post}punishments and rewards to align incentives. Field data is mixed on whether, and to what extent, such informal incentive contracting (paradoxically) crowds out efficient solutions to the...

One of the most striking results in experimental economics is the ease with which market bubbles form in a laboratory setting and the difficulty of preventing them. This article re-examines bubble experiments in light of the results of an earlier series of market experiments that examine how...

We report results of an internet experiment designed to test the theory of informational cascades in financial markets. More than 6000 subjects, including a subsample of 267 consultants from an international consulting firm, participated in the experiment. As predicted by theory, we find that...