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...

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...

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...

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 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.

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...

Consider a contest for a prize in which each player knows his/her own ability, but may or may not know those of his/her rivals (the complete or incomplete information regimes). Our main result is that, if the value of the prize is high, more effort and output are engendered under incomplete...

Art is often used as an investment vehicle. Given the importance of market efficiency in finance, we use a large auction-based index to test whether the art market is weakly efficient. Evidence reveals that returns on artworks exhibit high positive auto-correlation. We attribute this result to...

We derive several implications of incentive compatibility in general (i.e., not necessarily quasilinear) environments. Building on Kos and Messner (2013), we provide a (partial) characterization of incentive compatible mechanisms.