This paper discusses aspects of recruiting subjects for economic laboratory experiments, and shows how the Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments can help. The software package provides experimenters with a free, convenient, and very powerful tool to organize their experiments and sessions.

This paper empirically compares the use of straightforward verses more complex methods to estimate public goods game data. Five different estimation methods were compared holding the dependent and explanatory variables constant. The models were evaluated using a large out-of-sample cross-country public goods game data set. The ordered probit and tobit random-effects models yielded lower p values compared to more straightforward models: ordinary least squares, fixed and random effects. However, the more complex models also had a greater predictive bias. The straightforward models performed better than expected. Despite their limitations, they produced unbiased predictions for both the in-sample and out-of-sample data.

Studying the likelihood that individuals cheat requires a valid statistical measure of dishonesty. We develop an easy empirical method to measure and compare lying behavior within and across studies to correct for sampling errors. This method estimates the full distribution of lying when agents privately observe the outcome of a random process (e.g., die roll) and can misreport what they observed. It provides a precise estimate of the mean and confidence interval (offering lower and upper bounds on the proportion of people lying) over the full distribution, allowing for a vast range of statistical inferences not generally available with the existing methods.

Protocol analysis, in the form of concurrent verbal ‘thinking aloud’ reports, is a method of collecting and analyzing data about cognitive processes. This approach can help economists in evaluating competing theories of behavior and in categorizing heterogeneity of thinking patterns. As a proof of concept, I tested this method in the context of a guessing game. I found that concurrent think aloud protocols can inform us about individual’s thought processes without affecting decisions. The method allowed me to identify game theoretic thinking and heterogeneous approaches to unravelling the guessing game. The think aloud protocol is inexpensive and scalable, and it is a useful tool for identifying empirical regularities regarding decision processes.

Laboratory experiments have been often replaced by online experiments in the last decade. This trend has been reinforced when academic and research work based on physical interaction had to be suspended due to restrictions imposed to limit the spread of Covid-19. Therefore, data quality and results from web experiments have become an issue which is currently investigated. Are there significant differences between lab experiments and online findings? We contribute to this debate via an experiment aimed at comparing results from a novel online protocol with traditional laboratory settings, using the same pool of participants. We find that participants in our experiment behave in a similar way across settings and that there are at best weakly significant and quantitatively small differences in behavior observed using our online protocol and physical laboratory setting.

We provide evidence on the extent to which survey items in the Preference Survey Module and the resulting Global Preference Survey measuring social preferences—trust, altruism, positive and negative reciprocity—predict behavior in corresponding experimental games outside the original participant sample of Falk et al. (Manag Sci, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4455). Our results, which are based on a replication study with university students in Tehran, Iran, are mixed. While quantitative items considering hypothetical versions of the experimental games correlate significantly and economically meaningfully with individual behavior, none of the qualitative items show significant correlations. The only exception is altruism where results correspond more closely to the original findings.

When making decisions, people tend to look back and forth between the alternatives until they eventually make a choice. Eye-tracking research has established that these shifts in attention are strongly linked to choice outcomes. A predominant framework for understanding the dynamics of the choice process, and thus the effects of attention, is sequential sampling of information. However, existing methods for estimating the attention parameters in these models are computationally costly and overly flexible, and yield estimates with unknown precision and bias. Here we propose an estimation method that relies on a link between sequential sampling models and random utility models (RUM). This method uses familiar econometric tools (i.e., logistic regression) and yields estimates that appear to be unbiased and relatively precise compared to existing methods, in a small fraction of the computation time. The RUM thus appears to be a useful tool for estimating the effects of attention on choice.

For simple prospects routinely used for certainty equivalent elicitation, random expected utility preferences imply a conditional expectation function that can mimic deterministic rank-dependent preferences. That is, a subject with random expected utility preferences can have expected certainty equivalents exactly like those predicted by rank-dependent probability weighting functions of the inverse-s shape discussed by Quiggin (J Econ Behav Organ 3:323–343, 1982) and advocated by Tversky and Kahneman (J Risk Uncertainty 5:297–323, 1992), Prelec (Econometrica 66:497–527, 1998) and other scholars. Certainty equivalents may not nonparametrically identify preferences: Their conditional expectation (and critically, their interpretation) depends on assumptions concerning the source of their variability.

Garbarino et al. (J Econ Sci Assoc. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40881-018-0055-4, 2018) describe a new method to calculate the probability distribution of the proportion of lies told in “coin flip” style experiments. I show that their estimates and confidence intervals are flawed. I demonstrate two better ways to estimate the probability distribution of what we really care about—the proportion of liars—and I provide R software to do this.

There is growing evidence that not all experimental subjects understand their strategic environment. We introduce a “choice process” (CP) protocol that aids in identifying these subjects. This protocol elicits in an incentive compatible manner provisional choices as players internalize their decision making environment. We implement the CP protocol in the modified 2/3 guessing game and use it to pinpoint players that are naive by identifying those who make weakly dominated choices some time into the play. At all time horizons these players average close to 50. This is consistent with the assumption in Level-K theory that the least sophisticated subjects (the naive ones) play uniformly over the [1–100] action space. In contrast, sophisticated players show evidence of increased understanding as time passes. We find that the CP protocol mirrors play in multiple setups with distinct time constraints. Hence it may be worth deploying more broadly to understand the interaction between decision time and choice.

We ask whether social preferences measured in subjects who come to the laboratory when invited are systematically different from those of subjects who only respond when an online option is available. Subjects participated in two types of third-party (other–other) dictator games and a trust game, either in the lab or on-line. In the third party dictator games, the dictator divides $20 between two other individuals, one of whom is a member of their in-group. (We also varied types of in-group between a real group and an artificial group.) In the trust game, the first-mover decides how much of the endowment to send to the second-mover. The second-mover receives the amount sent tripled by the experimenter and decides how much to send back to the trustee. Across all the games, we find no statistically significant differences in social preferences measured in-lab and on-line.

Some economic interactions are based on trust, others on monetary incentives or monitoring. In the tax compliance context, the monitoring approach creates compliance based on audits and fines (enforced compliance), in contrast to the trust-based (voluntary compliance) approach, which is based on taxpayers’ willingness to comply. Here, we examine how changes in taxation regarding platform economy revenues affect intended labor supply on such platforms. New EU legislation, effective from 2023, will mandate data sharing between platforms and tax authorities across Europe, thus resulting in increased monitoring. We investigate how this upcoming shift in monitoring power affects the intended use of platforms and how it may interact with users’ trust. We use a survey among platform workers (N = 626) in the Netherlands to examine views of the proposed regulation change, corrected for the proportion of platform income and several measures of trust. We experimentally manipulate information by either informing participants about the upcoming monitoring change or not. Results show that informing respondents about the change negatively affects expected supply of labor, and this effect is independent of respondents’ trust. We discuss the policy implications of these results.

This paper surveys what we have learned on financial literacy and its relation to financial behavior from data collected in the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) Household Survey, a project done in collaboration with academics. A pioneering survey fielded in 2005 included an extensive set of financial literacy questions and questions that can serve as instruments for financial literacy in regression analyses to assess the causal effect of financial literacy on behavior. We describe how this survey spurred a series of research papers demonstrating the crucial role of financial literacy in stock market participation, retirement planning, and wealth accumulation. This inspired various follow-up studies and experiments based on new data collections in the DNB Household Survey. Researchers worldwide have used these data for innovative studies, and other surveys have included similar questions. This case study exemplifies the essential role of data in empirical research, showing how innovative data collections can inspire new research initiatives and significantly contribute to our understanding of household financial decision-making.

We measure crypto and financial literacy using microdata from the Bank of Canada’s Bitcoin Omnibus Survey. Our crypto literacy measure is based on three questions covering basic aspects of Bitcoin. The financial literacy measure we use is based on three questions covering basic aspects of conventional finance (the “Big Three”). We find that a significant share of Canadian Bitcoin owners have low crypto knowledge and low financial literacy. We also find gender differences in crypto literacy among Bitcoin owners, with female owners scoring lower in Bitcoin knowledge than male owners. We do not, however, find significant gender differences in financial literacy amongst Bitcoin owners. In contrast, non-owners show gender differences in both crypto and financial literacy.

The share of workers who are self-employed rises markedly with age. Given policy concerns about inadequate retirement savings, especially among those with lower education, and the resulting interest in encouraging employment at older ages, it is important to understand the role that self-employment arrangements play in facilitating work among seniors. New data from a survey module fielded on a Gallup telephone survey distinguish independent contractor work from other self-employment and provide information on informal and online platform work. The Gallup data show that, especially after accounting for individuals who are miscoded as employees, self-employment is even more prevalent at older ages than suggested by existing data. Work as an independent contractor is the most common type of self-employment. Roughly one-quarter of independent contractors aged 50 and older work for a former employer. At older ages, self-employment generally – and work as an independent contractor specifically – is more common among the highly educated, accounting for much of the difference in employment rates across education groups. We provide suggestive evidence that differences in opportunities for independent contractor work play an important role in the lower employment rates of less-educated older adults.

The value of exports to the domestic UK economy does not equal gross export flows, as some of the value-added within UK exports may have been generated abroad. For key business and financial service industries we present new and initial estimates giving a lower bound for the value-added component of exports generated directly by the domestic exporting sector, called the direct domestic value-added component of exports. Our initial estimates suggest that at least 38 per cent of UK monetary financial institutions (MFIs) exports in 2016 was direct domestic value-added amounting to £14.6bn, of which £5.0bn came from exports to the EU. These initial estimates suggest that approximately 80 per cent of accountancy and legal services exports in 2014 were direct domestic value-added amounting to £1.7bn and £5.2bn respectively, of which £500mn and £1.7bn came from exports to the EU respectively.

Numerous primary investigators collected and processed long-termed time series on German educational statistics in the context of their studies. As a result, there are a multitude of quantitative empirical studies. On the one hand, there is the project group on German Educational Statistics.1 Its projects were targeted at describing and analyzing the long-term structural changes of the German educational system on a broad empirical and statistical basis. On the other hand, there are comprehensive data compilations of individual research projects, focusing on a wide variety of special educational research topics. The online database “histat” provides central digital access to these datasets on German educational history. Currently, it offers more than 120,000 long-term time series on the German educational system for a period of 200 years. The striking size of the database shows its key importance for researchers in the field of education. Thus, this paper aims to provide useful insights into the background of the database, the special characteristics of the data compilations and their analytical potential. Additionally, examples are given of how the data have already been used by researchers.

The roots and uses of economic experiments in problem solving and hypothesis testing are explored in the present article. The literature suggests that the primary advantage of economics experiments is the ability to use controlled stimuli to test economic hypotheses. Other literature also suggests that experiments are useful in problem solving settings. The advantages and disadvantages of experiments are discussed.

This research uses data from the 2004 Agricultural Resource Management Survey and probit regression to examine the determinants of poverty among U.S. farm households. The findings reveal, among others, the importance of a livelihood strategy that combines participation in government programs and off-farm work in lowering poverty rates. Findings also show the importance of educational attainment of the farm operator in mitigating poverty, but only when poverty is measured on a relative rather than an absolute basis. Policy recommendations are provided in the context of these findings.

This article addresses the important issue of anchoring in contingent valuation surveys that use the double-bounded elicitation format. Anchoring occurs when responses to the follow-up dichotomous choice valuation question are influenced by the bid presented in the initial dichotomous choice question. Specifically, we adapt a theory from psychology to characterize respondents as those who are likely to anchor and those who are not. Using a model developed by Herriges and Shogren (1996), our method appears successful in discriminating between those who anchor and those who did not. An important result is that when controlling for anchoring – and allowing the degree of anchoring to differ between respondent groups – the efficiency of the double-bounded welfare estimate is greater than for the initial dichotomous choice question. This contrasts with earlier research that finds that the potential efficiency gain from the double-bounded questions is lost when anchoring is controlled for and that we are better off not asking follow-up questions.