Researchers use practice rounds to familiarize participants with experimental auction mechanisms. We find a positive correlation between practice bids and bids submitted in later rounds. We consider three explanations for this correlation: a behavioral anchoring effect, a tendency for some...

Many randomized controlled trials require participants to opt in. Such self-selection could introduce a potential bias, because only the most optimistic may participate. We revisit this prediction. We argue that in many situations, the experimental intervention is competing with alternative...

We use a sample of subsistence farmers in Sierra Leone as respondents to compare behavior in a context-free experiment (a standard public goods game) and behavior in the field (a real development intervention). There is no meaningful correlation in behavior across contexts. This casts doubt on...

Using experimental data of children and their mothers, this paper explores the intergenerational relationship of impatience. The child’s impatience stems from a delay of gratification experiment, the mother’s from a choice task. Findings demonstrate an intergenerational relationship in...

Subjective expectations are fundamental for understanding individual behavior. Yet, little is known about how individuals use new information to formulate and update their subjective expectations. In this study, we exploit data from a multi-treatment field experiment to investigate how...

The average of periodic growth rates is a downwardly biased estimator of the rate of growth of a country. The higher the variance of the periodical growth rates, the higher the downward bias. The longer the business cycle, the higher the downward bias. In this short paper, we demonstrate these...

We examine the effect of varying the number of bidders and units on bid values in multi-unit auctions. Our results suggest that the uniform-price auction is sensitive to demand reduction, however, increasing the number of bidders or/and units can significantly decrease it.

We examine a housing market with price controls and show how the allocation problem can be solved through a price system. We demonstrate that the auction of Talman and Yang (2008) always generates a core allocation, thus resulting in a Pareto efficient and stable outcome.

We provide extensions of the Bulow and Klemperer (1996) result when the seller has value for the object above the minimum value of the buyers. The result may fail. We show that the seller does better with more participation and some exclusion than the optimal exclusion of buyers of low value...

We establish the effort-maximizing rule of allocating heterogeneous prizes when contestants privately observe their effort efficiencies. With ex ante symmetric players and increasing virtual effort efficiency, an all pay auction maximizes the total expected effort.