Experimental methods are currently being extensively used to elicit subjective values for commodities and projects. Three methodological problems are not systematically addressed in this emerging literature. The first is the potential for laboratory responses to be censored by field opportunities, so that lab responses can be confounded by uncontrolled knowledge of the field; the second is the potential for subjective perceptions about field opportunities, and hence valuation responses, to be affected by the institution used to elicit values; and the third is the potential for some elicitation institutions to influence subjective perceptions of characteristics of the commodity or project being valued, and hence change the very commodity being valued. All three problems result in potential loss of control over the value elicitation process. For example, we show that censoring affects conclusions drawn in a major study of beef packaging valuation. We derive implications for experimental designs that minimize the potential effect of these methodological problems.

This paper reports the results of the Ultimatum Game (UG), Dictator Game (DG) and Public Goods Game (PGG) played among the Tsimane, a group of forager-horticulturalists living in the Bolivian Amazon. Game results differ significantly from those commonly reported among modern, westernized populations. Without a long history of anonymous interactions, it is highly suspect whether the Tsimane or other traditional populations play economic games under assumptions of anonymity and one-shot exposure. Employing a behavioral ecology framework, I test predictions that differential market exposure, costs of giving, and experience with cooperation can help explain much of the variance in game outcomes. While these factors sometimes act as important predictors of game behavior, the most significant predictor is village membership. Implications for understanding the role of markets, frequent interaction with strangers, and payoffs to cooperation in daily life can help us better understand cross-cultural variation in pro-social behavior.

Previous studies have shown that simply knowing one player moves first can affect behavior in games, even when the first-mover's moves are known to be unobservable. This observation violates the game-theoretic principle that timing of unobserved moves is irrelevant, but is consistent with virtual observability, a theory of how timing can matter without the ability to observe actions. However, this previous research only shows that timing matters in games where knowledge that one player moved first can help select that player's preferred equilibrium, presenting an alternative explanation to virtual observability. We extend this work by varying timing of unobservable moves in ultimatum bargaining games and “weak link” coordination games. In the latter, the equilibrium selection explanation does not predict any change in behavior due to timing differences. We find that timing without observability affects behavior in both games, but not substantially.

We examine repetition as an institution that affects coordination failure in a game with and without pre-play communication. We use probit regression with random effects to test hypotheses regarding the frequency and form of coordination failure in the presence of repeated play versus one-shot games. Our results indicate that repetition without pre-play communication results in a lower frequency of coordination failure relative to one-shot game outcomes. This result is reversed when pre-play communication is allowed. Our evidence also suggests that repeated play coordination failures tend to be suboptimal Nash equilibria, whereas one-shot game coordination failures are disequilibria regardless of the presence of pre-play communication.

Do fixed-prize charitable lotteries generate more net revenue than do revenue-dependent lotteries? I present the results of an experiment designed to test a theoretical prediction of the relationship between the prize structure of a lottery funding a public good and individuals’ participation in the lottery. I find that a fixed-prize lottery configuration induces significantly greater participation and a significantly higher level of public good funding than does a revenue-dependent lottery.

This study examines fairness perceptions in ultimatum bargaining games with asymmetric payoffs, outside options, and different information states. Fairness perceptions were dependent on treatment conditions. Specifically, when proposers had higher chip values, dollar offers were lower than when responders had higher chip values. When responders had an outside option, offers were higher and were rejected less often than when proposers had an outside option. However, a given offer was rejected more often when responders had an outside option. Therefore, similar to the first mover advantage, the “advantaged” or “entitled” player received a higher monetary payoff than they would otherwise. When there was complete information about payoff amounts (payoff conversion rates and outside options), rejections occurred more often, and given offer amounts were rejected more often than when there was incomplete information. When there was incomplete information, offers were higher in the initial rounds than in the final rounds. These results suggest that proposers made offers strategically, making offers that would not be rejected, rather than out of a concern for fairness.

This paper reports an experimental study of the public goods game in which contributions are not submitted all at once but incrementally as coordinated in real time by a clock. Individuals press a button as soon as the clock equals their willingness to contribute. By providing information about the point at which subjects stop further contributions we find evidence for conditionally cooperative behaviour: A subject's decision to stop contributing induces an immediate reaction of the other group members.

A burgeoning literature in experimental studies of the Voluntary Contribution Mechanism focuses on the ability of institutions that allow the monitoring, sanctioning, and/or rewarding of others to facilitate cooperation. In this paper rewards and sanctions are examined in a one-shot VCM setting that so far has been unexplored in the literature. The study finds that while some subjects are willing to reward and sanction others at a personal cost, the opportunity to reward or sanction is ineffective in facilitating cooperation relative to previous experiments in which a repeated game environment is employed. The study also compares behavior in an environment in which the imposition of rewards and sanctions is certain to an environment in which imposition is uncertain. The expected value of the reward or sanction is kept constant across environments to focus simply on the effect of uncertainty about imposition. Uncertainty does not change behavior in a significant way, either in the level of cooperation or the willingness of individuals to impose rewards or sanctions.

The experimental treatments analysed in this paper are simple in that there is a unique Nash equilibrium resulting in each player having a dominant strategy. However, the data show quite clearly that subjects do not always choose this strategy. In fact, when this dominant strategy is not a “focal” outcome it does not even describe the average decision adequately. It is shown that average individual decisions are best described by a decision error model based on a censored distribution as opposed to the truncated regression model which is typically used in similar studies. Moreover it is shown that in the treatments where the dominant strategy is not “focal” dynamics are important with average subject decisions initially corresponding to the “focal” outcome and then adjusting towards the Nash prediction. Overall, 66.7% of subjects are consistent with Payoff Maximization, 27.8% are consistent with an alternate preference maximization and 5.6% are random.

Prior archival studies of analysts’ forecasts have found evidence for systematic underreaction, systematic overreaction, and systematic optimism bias. Easterwood and Nutt (1999) attempt to reconcile the conflicting evidence by testing the robustness of Abarbanell and Bernard's (1992) underreaction results to the nature of the information. Consistent with systematic optimism, forecasts are found to underreact to negative earnings information but overreact to positive information. However, Easterwood and Nutt are unable to distinguish between misreaction caused by incentives unique to analysts with misreaction caused by human decision bias that may be typical of investors. We address this issue by analyzing forecast reactions to positive versus negative information in the controlled experimental setting of Gillette, Stevens, Watts, and Williams (1999). The forecast data reveal systematic underreaction to both positive and negative information, and the underreaction is generally greater for positive information than negative information. This suggests that prior empirical evidence of forecast overreaction to positive information is unlikely to be attributable to human decision bias.

This paper reports the findings of a meta-analysis of 37 papers with 75 results from ultimatum game experiments. We find that on average the proposer offers 40% of the pie to the responder. This share is smaller for larger pie sizes and larger when a strategy method is used or when subjects are inexperienced. On average 16% of the offers is rejected. The rejection rate is lower for larger pie sizes and for larger shares offered. Responders are less willing to accept an offer when the strategy method is employed. As the results come from different countries, meta-analysis provides an alternative way to investigate whether bargaining behavior in ultimatum games differs across countries. We find differences in behavior of responders (and not of proposers) across geographical regions. With one exception, these differences cannot be attributed to various cultural traits on which for instance the cultural classifications of Hofstede (1991) and Inglehart (2000) are based.

The gift-exchange game is a form of sequential prisoner's dilemma, developed by Fehr et al. (1993), and popularized in a series of papers by Ernst Fehr and co-authors. While the European studies typically feature a high degree of gift exchange, the few U.S. studies provide some conflicting results. We find that the degree of gift exchange is surprisingly sensitive to an apparently innocuous change—whether or not a comprehensive payoff table is provided in the instructions. We also find significant and substantial time trends in responder behavior.

This paper reports the results of an experiment in which subjects had to buy real products in 5 different budget/price situations. Subjects were randomly drawn from the population of a medium-sized French city, and some of their socio-economic characteristics were recorded. We check the consistency of product choices with the Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preferences (GARP), and find that 29% of the subjects are GARP-inconsistent. This inconsistency rate is slightly lower than the ones found in comparable studies. A possible explanation for our lower rate of GARP violations might be that the subjects in our study were confronted with less budget/price situations. In looking for determinants of the GARP violations, we find that gender, the size of the household, the degree of switching between different products, and the times spent on performing experimental tasks have significant impacts on the probability of GARP-inconsistency.

In this paper, we examine the usefulness of the dominant firm model of price leadership to serve as a benchmark for organizing behavior in laboratory markets. This well established model, whose origins can be traced back over a hundred years, has been recently applied to such landmark antitrust cases as Standard Oil and Alcoa and more recently to the analysis of deregulated markets for electric power. Our results indicate that in posted offer markets the dominant firm quite often produces more than the model's benchmark and sometimes at much greater prices. With sealed offer auction rules and a low elasticity of fringe supply, the dominant firm produces the theoretical output at a price greater than the prediction. However, with a high elasticity of fringe supply, the dominant firm produces more output over a wide range of prices that includes the predicted price.