Significant difference between response to real and hypothetical valuation questions is often referred to as hypothetical bias. Some economists have had success with using “cheap talk” (which entails reading a script that explicitly highlights the hypothetical bias problem before...

Individuals are widely believed to overstate their economic valuation of a good by a factor of two or three. This paper reports the results of a meta-analysis of hypothetical bias in 28 stated preference valuation studies that report monetary willingness-to-pay and used the same mechanism for...

One of the problems with proposals for substantialinstitutional change in water systems is thatmodification and irreversibility make the processslow, cautious and costly to society. In this paper,we discuss the role that experimental economics canplay in evaluating proposed institutional changes...