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...

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...

This paper reconstructs the history of experimental research on consumer demand behavior between 1930 and 1970. The backgrounds of the experiments and their impact on the development of consumption theory are also investigated. Among other things, the paper shows that in fact many prominent...

The article presents a theory that I denote “Relative Thinking Theory,” which claims that people consider relative differences and not only absolute differences when making various economics decisions, even in those cases where the rational model dictates that people should consider only...

The trust building process is basic to social science. We investigate it in a laboratory setting using a novel multi-stage trust game where social gains are achieved if players trust each other in each stage. And in each stage, players have an opportunity to appropriate these gains or be...

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...

This paper explores, through a series of experiments, the effect of shill bidding upon revenues and prices in auctions. We study the practice of shill bidding in a common value framework. Our findings are consistent with the theoretical prediction that, if bidders are aware of the possibility of...