Meritocratic fairness justifies inequality when it stems from performance. Yet performance is influenced by one's genetics. I investigate whether individuals' redistribution preferences are affected by their beliefs about genetics' role in generating performance inequality. In an incentivized...

Common sense is a dynamic concept and it is natural that our (statistical) common sense lags behind the development of statistical science. What is not so easy to understand is why common sense lags behind as much as it does. We conduct a survey among Japanese students and try to understand why...

This experiment compares the price dynamics and bubble formation in an asset market with a price adjustment rule in three treatments where subjects (1) submit a price forecast only, (2) choose quantity to buy/sell and (3) perform both tasks. We find deviation of the market price from the...

The strategy method is becoming an important tool in experimentalmethodology. This study examines how well this method works in anindividual decision experiment. Subjects are faced with a sequentialsearch problem. After extensive practice solving the problem andformulating strategies, they play...

Rational Expectations (RE) models have two crucial dimensions: 1) agents correctly forecast future prices given all available information, and 2) given expectations, agents solve optimization problems and these solutions in turn determine actual price realizations. Experimental testing of such...

The supposed irrelevance of historical costs for rational decision making has been the subject of much interest in the economic literature. In this paper we explore whether individual decision making under risk is affected by the cost of the supplied information. Outside of the lab, it is...

We study the emergence of bubbles in a laboratory experiment with large groups of individuals. The realized price is the aggregation of the forecasts of a group of individuals, with positive expectations feedback through speculative demand. When prices deviate from fundamental value, a random...

It is widely hypothesized that anxiety and worry about an uncertain future lead to the adoption of comforting beliefs or "wishful thinking". However, there is little direct causal evidence for this effect. In our experiment, participants perform a visual pattern recognition task where some...