Showing 1 - 10 of 66
In this note we shall discuss a concept that - despite its prominence in both Hume (1739) and Smith (1759), its obvious relevance for social behavior, and its not so infrequent use in colloquial language - has never gained a foothold in economic theory: the concept of empathy. Specifically, we...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010331363
This paper provides a conceptual framework of multilateral bargaining in a bilaterally oligopolistic industry to analyze the motivations for horizontal mergers, technology choice, and their welfare implications. We first analyze the implication of market structure for the distribution of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010278136
We experimentally examine the effects of price competition in markets for expe-rience goods where sellers can build up reputations for quality. We compare price competition to monopolistic markets and markets where prices are exogenously fixed (somewhere between the endogenous oligopoly and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010500562
This paper analyzes the role of narrowly selfish and other-regarding preferences for the median voter in a Meltzer-Richard (1981) framework. We use computerized and real human co-players to distinguish between these sets of motivations. Redistribution to real co-players has a negative effect on...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010307680
Prospect theory (PT) is the dominant descriptive theory of decision making under risk today. For the modeling of choices, PT relies on a psychologically founded separation of risk attitudes into attitudes towards outcomes, captured in a value function; and attitudes towards probabilities,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010322514
We experimentally investigate information aggregation through majority voting when some voters are biased. In such situations, majority voting can have a dark side, that is, result in groups making choices inferior to those made by individuals acting alone. In line with theoretical predictions,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010325107
We obtain rich measures of risk preferences of poor farmers in Vietnam, and estimate structural models that capture risk preferences over different probability levels and across different domains (gains and losses). The results break radically with the previous literature on risk preferences, in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010325109
We investigate the possibility that a decision-maker prefers to avoid making a decision and instead delegates it to an external device, e.g., a coin flip. In a series of experiments our participants often choose a stochastically dominated lottery between outcomes, contradicting most theories of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010352469
We explore the role of cheap excuses in product choice. If a product improves upon one ethically relevant dimension, agents may care less about other, completely independent ethical facets of the product. This 'static moral self-licensing' would extend the logic of the well-studied moral...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011639357
A recent literature emphasizes the importance of the gender gap in willingness to compete as a partial explanation for gender differences in labor market outcomes. However, whereas experiments investigating willingness to compete typically do so in anonymous environments, real world competitions...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011672157