A theory is said to be fully absorbable whenever its own acceptance by all of the individuals belonging to a certain population does not question its predictive validity. This accounts for strategic equilibria and can be related to the logic underlying convergence of behaviour and intentional...

We have experimentally tested a theory of bounded rational behavior in a "lemon market". It provides an explanation for the observation that real world players successfully conclude transactions when perfect rationality predicts a market collapse. We analyzed two different market designs :...

Wir nutzen die Ergebnisse eines Experiments über Lemons-Märkte, um wirtschaftspolitische Folgerungen über die EU-Verbraucherschutzregulierung von 1999 abzuleiten. Die beiden Marktdesigns, die im Experiment getestet wurden, unterscheiden sich hinsichtlich des Grades, zu dem die Verbraucher das...

In this paper we experimentally test a theory of boundedly rational behavior in a "lemons market." We analyzed two different market designs, for which perfect rationality implies complete and partial market collapse, respectively. Our empirical observations deviate substantially from these...

We conduct a contest experiment where participants can invest in increasing both the mean and the spread of an uncertain performance variable. Subjects are treated with different prize schemes and in accordance with theory we observe substantial investments in spread. We find that both types of...

One possible conclusion from recent experimental research on decision making under risk is that observed behaviour can be reasonable accommodated by expected utility plus an error term. This conclusion implies that the violation rate of expected utility should decrease if errors are excluded....

This study examines whether people optimally respond to prize incentives for risk taking in tournaments. I exploit the television game show World Poker Tour as a natural experiment. The results show that professional players strategically choose the degree of risk taking depending on the...

We report results of an internet experiment designed to test the theory of informational cascades in financial markets (Avery and Zemsky, AER, 1998). More than 6000 subjects, including a subsample of 267 consultants from an international consulting firm, participated in the experiment. As...

This paper focuses on belief distortion in the context of lying decisions. We employ a twostage variant of the "dice under the cup" paradigm, in which subjects' beliefs are elicited in stage 1 before performing the dice task in stage 2. In stage 1, we elicit the subjects' beliefs about (i)...

Public reputation mechanisms are an effective means to limit opportunistic behavior in markets suffering from moral hazard problems. While previous research was mostly concerned with the influence of exogenous feedback mechanisms, this study considers the endogenous emergence of reputation...