1,721,313 research outputs found
Testing the 'standard' model of stochastic choice under risk
Models of stochastic choice are intended to capture the substantial amount of noise observed in decisions under risk. We present an experimental test of one model, which many regard as the default—the Basic Fechner model. We consider one of the model’s key assumptions—that the noise around the subjective value of a risky option is independent of other features of the decision problem. We find that this assumption is systematically violated. However the main patterns in our data can be accommodated by a more recent variant of the Fechner model, or within the random preference framework
The willingness to pay — willingness to accept gap, the “endowment effect,” subject misconceptions, and experimental procedures for eliciting valuations : comment
Plott and Zeiler (2005) report that the willingness-to-pay/willingness-to-accept disparity is absent for mugs in a particular experimental setting, designed to neutralize misconceptions about the procedures used to elicit valuations. This result has received sustained attention in the literature. However, other data from that same study, not published in that paper, exhibit a significant and persistent disparity when the same experimental procedures are applied to lotteries. We report new data confirming both results, thereby suggesting that the presence or absence of a disparity may be a more complex issue than some may have supposed. (JEL C91, D12, D81, D83
Do markets reveal preferences or shape them?
We contrast the proposition that markets reveal independently-existing preferences with the alternative possibility that they may help to shape them. Using demand-revealing experimental market institutions, we separate the shaping effects of price cues from the effects of market discipline. We find that individual valuations and prevailing prices are systematically affected by both exogenous manipulations of price expectations and endogenous but divergent price feedback. These effects persist to varying degrees, in spite of further market experience. In some circumstances, market experience may actually consolidate them. We discuss possible explanations for these effects of uninformative price cues on revealed preferences
Beyond choice : investigating the sensitivity and validity of measures of strength of preference
Many experiments investigating different decision theories have relied heavily on pairwise choices between lotteries. These are easy to incentivise, but often yield only limited dichotomous information. This paper considers whether respondents’ judgments about their strength of preference (SoP) for one alternative over another can usefully supplement standard choice data. We report extensive evidence that such judgments show sensitivity to variations in question format and parameter values in the directions we should expect, not only within-subject but also between-sample. We illustrate how such judgments can usefully supplement standard pairwise choice data and enrich our understanding of observed behaviour
Modelling Noise and Imprecision in Individual Decisions
When individuals take part in decision experiments, their answers are typically subject to some degree of noise / error / imprecision. There are different ways of modelling this stochastic element in the data, and the interpretation of the data can be altered radically, depending on the assumptions made about the stochastic specification. This paper presents the results of an experiment which gathered data of a kind that has until now been in short supply. These data strongly suggest that the 'usual' (Fechnerian) assumptions about errors are inappropriate for individual decision experiments. Moreover, they provide striking evidence that core preferences display systematic departures from transitivity which cannot be attributed to any 'error' story.Error Imprecision Preferences Transitivity
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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