We report the results of an experimental study analyzing the effects of Internet piracy on book sales. We conducted a year-long controlled large-scale field experiment with pre-treatment pair matching. Half of the book titles received experimental treatment, in which a specialized agency would...

We propose an experimental method whose purpose is to induce selfish behavior in games for a broad class of social preferences. It provides a theoretical framework for testing game theoretical predictions by confronting subjects with a commonly known payoff matrix actually representing their...

Studies show that people tend to provide overly narrow confidence intervals for unknown values. Such a form of overconfidence would have an important impact on financial markets, among other domains, leading i.a. to excessive trading. The present study is one of the very few that try to...

This paper reports a field experiment investigating effectiveness of moral appeal in discouraging exam cheating. Substantial level of cheating was identified using an index of test answers similarity, contrasted with low self-reports. The treatment manipulation made an impact on self-reported...

We consider a monopolist producer of information goods that may be subject to unauthorized copying. The key feature of our model is that we allow consumers to have ethical concerns based on equity theory that may reduce their utility of such a copy. We derive the formulas describing demand for...

We report a laboratory experiment aimed at investigating factors affecting choice between different versions of a full-length movie. In particular, we estimate the willingness to pay for a legal, rather than pirated copy and compare it to the impact of such characteristics as picture quality or...

This study employs a vignette experiment to inquire, which features of online “piracy” make it ethically discernible from a traditional theft. This question is pertinent since the social norm concerning traditional theft is starkly different from the evidence on ethical evaluation of online...

The objective of this work was to investigate whether situational emotions can influence consumers’ decision to purchase lottery tickets. We conducted a field experiment in which positive or negative emotions were induced immediately prior to such a decision in 685 subjects unaware of their...

In this study we try to assess the prevalence of illicit downloading in the market of audio books and the willingness to admit to such practices. We compare the Bayesian Truth Serum (Prelec, 2004) treatment in which truthful responses and precise estimates are rewarded to the control treatment...

In this study we sought to verify the hypothesis that a researcher’s gender affects evaluation of his or her work, especially in fields in which women are a small minority. To this end we asked a sample of economics majors to rate papers written by mixed-gender couples, indicating that they...