Theory and experiment: What are the questions?

Smith, Vernon L.

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2009.02.008

Cited by 136 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…The twelve remaining choices were paid in full. The fully paid choices were the offer and acceptance threshold in the Ultimatum game (under no-risk, low-risk and high-risk realizations of the pie size), dictator giving in the Dictator game, and investment and return decisions in the Trust game (under low-risk and 14 We ran, at the tail end of the CTU sessions, two control sessions with an additional 32 CTU student subjects (sessions 9 and 10, indicated by CTU R in Table 2). The subjects in the control group read the same instructions but were given a different ordering of decisions: all low-risk treatments were switched to high-risk treatments and vice versa.…”

Section: Experimental Design and Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fairness in Risky Environments: Theory and Evidence

Koten

Ortmann

Babicky

2013

Games

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Abstract:The relationship between risk in the environment, risk aversion and inequality aversion is not well understood. Theories of fairness have typically assumed that pie sizes are known ex-ante. Pie sizes are, however, rarely known ex ante. Using two simple allocation problems-the Dictator and Ultimatum game-we explore whether, and how exactly, unknown pie sizes with varying degrees of risk ("endowment risk") influence individual behavior. We derive theoretical predictions for these games using utility functions that capture additively separable constant relative risk aversion and inequity aversion. We experimentally test the theoretical predictions using two subject pools: students of Czech Technical University and employees of Prague City Hall. We find that: (1) Those who are more risk-averse are also more inequality-averse in the Dictator game (and also in the Ultimatum game but there not statistically significantly so) in that they give more; (2) Using the within-subject feature of our design, and in line with our theoretical prediction, varying risk does not influence behavior in the Dictator game, but does so in the Ultimatum game (contradicting our theoretical prediction for that game); (3) Using the within-subject feature of our design, subjects tend to make inconsistent decisions across games; this is true on the level of individuals as well as in the aggregate. This latter finding contradicts the evidence in Blanco et al. (2011); (4) There are no subject-pool differences once we control for the elicited risk attitude and demographic variables that we collect. OPEN ACCESSGames 2013, 4 209

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Section: Experimental Design and Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fairness in Risky Environments: Theory and Evidence

Koten

Ortmann

Babicky

2013

Games

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“…The mere fact that subjects know that they will be playing another game may influence their behavior (Smith, 2010). It may adversely affect the interpretability of data by creating a mismatch between the experimenter's and subjects' models of the situation.…”

Section: Within-subjects Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some of the prominent contributions include the work of Tversky and Kahnemann (1981) in the domain of individual choice, Dyer and Kagel (1996) in common-value auctions, Hoffman et al (1996) in dictator games, and Levitt et al (2010) in zero sum games. Ortmann and Gigerenzer (1997), Smith (2003Smith ( , 2010, Camerer (2003), Samuelson (2005), Harrison and List (2004), Levitt and List (2007), Bardsley et al (2010), and Bolton (2010) are excellent sources for a general discussion of this issue. 3 2 In the standard trust game the first mover (often referred to as the trustor) decides how much of his endowment to pass to the second mover.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Context and interpretation in laboratory experiments: The case of reciprocity

Levati

Miettinen

Rai

2011

Journal of Economic Psychology

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract. The existing literature acknowledges that a mismatch between the experimenter's and the subjects' models of an experimental task can adversely affect the interpretation of data from laboratory experiments. We discuss why the two common experimental designs (between-subjects and within-subjects) used to conduct experiments may fail to sufficiently account for this concern. An alternative design for laboratory experiments is proposed which may alleviate this concern especially in studies of social preferences. The proposed design is used to answer some questions that have attracted continued attention in the literature on social preferences in general and reciprocity in particular. Terms of use: Documents in

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“…In fact, observational data regarding choices and behaviour can always be interpreted in different and possibly contrasting ways. As Smith (2010) claims, decisions are as sensitive to small variations in context as they are to structural elements and rules of the game (in the case of strategic interaction). This goes back to the intuition by Hume (1739) that we tend to interpret actions that may be influenced by "circumstances unknown to us" as pure motivation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microfoundations, behaviour, and evolution: Evidence from experiments

Bogliacino

Codagnone

2021

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics

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The article discusses whether and to what extent experiments can contribute to a research paradigm based on the study of human behaviour in complex evolving environments and on the problem of asymmetric adjustment among different components of economic system along certain trajectories, focusing on the possibility that experimental evidence may represent an external consistency check on this type of heterodox modelling. It considers the evidence on rationality of human agents, and the possibility to identify a microfoundation alternative to homo oeconomicus, discussing the evidence on humans as strong reciprocators, as trusting individuals and as embedded in social norms.

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Theory and experiment: What are the questions?

Cited by 136 publications

References 40 publications

Fairness in Risky Environments: Theory and Evidence

Fairness in Risky Environments: Theory and Evidence

Context and interpretation in laboratory experiments: The case of reciprocity

Microfoundations, behaviour, and evolution: Evidence from experiments

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