An experimental investigation of overdissipation in the all pay auction

Pervasive overbidding represents a well-documented feature of all-pay auctions. Aggregate bids exceed Nash predictions in laboratory experiments, and individuals often submit bids that guarantee negative profits. This paper examines three factors that may reduce pervasive overbidding: (a) repetition (experience), (b) reputation (strangers vs. partners), and (c) active participation. Reputation and repetition reduce aggregate overdissipation, but they eliminate it only in conjunction with active participation.     

Preferences and beliefs in a sequential social dilemma: a within-subjects analysis

In empirical analyses of games, preferences and beliefs are typically treated as independent. However, if beliefs and preferences interact, this may have implications for the interpretation of observed behavior. Our sequential social dilemma experiment allows us to separate different interaction channels. When subjects play both roles in such experiments, a positive correlation between first- and second-mover behavior is frequently reported. We find that the observed correlation primarily originates via an indirect channel, where second-mover decisions influence beliefs through a consensus effect, and the first-mover decision is a best response to these beliefs. Specifically, beliefs about second-mover cooperation are biased toward own second-mover behavior, and most subjects best respond to stated beliefs. However, we also find evidence for a direct, preference-based channel. When first movers know the true probability of second-mover cooperation, subjects' own second moves still have predictive power regarding their first moves.     

Endowment effects in contests

We experimentally study overbidding in contests and find that overbidding is significantly higher when subjects are given a large per-experiment endowment rather than when the endowment is given per-period. Risk-aversion and non-monetary utility of winning can partially explain our findings.     

Individual behavior of first-price auctions: The importance of information feedback in computerized experimental markets

This article reports the results of an individual choice experiment designed to test the Nash equilibrium predictions of the first-price sealed-bid auction. A subject faced in 100 auctions always the same resale value and competed with computer-simulated bids. The design used between-subjects variation and involved information feedback as the treatment variable. Earlier experimental work on first price auctions has frequently reported an overbidding relative to the risk neutral Nash equilibrium. Our data provide evidence that overbidding can be fostered by the standard information feedback in auction experiments, which, after each auction, reveals the winning bid only. By means of learning direction theory we explain the individual bidding dynamics in our experiment. Finally we apply impulse balance theory and make long run predictions of individual bidding behavior.     

Belief formation: an experiment with outside observers

In this paper we study the belief formation processes of a group of outside observers making predictions about the actions of a player involved in a repeated game. We document four main results. First, there is substantial heterogeneity in the accuracy of our observers, with average accuracy being quite poor. Second, while there is no difference between the most and the least accurate observer in their initial beliefs, there are striking differences in their belief updating rules. The most accurate observers have a well-formulated model of player behavior, are good at best responding and quickly incorporate new information to their beliefs. The worst observers behave in an opposite manner on all three fronts. Third, when the game does not converge, subjects look beyond historical actions to make predictions and place more emphasis on forgone payoffs. Finally, we document that a “collective wisdom” emerges when our data are pooled across subjects and analyzed. Specifically, the accuracy of the group estimates becomes much higher than that of the average observer.     

Ambiguous act equilibria

A game-theoretic framework that allows for explicitly randomized strategies is used to study the effect of ambiguity aversion on equilibrium outcomes. The notions of “independent strategies” as well as of “common priors” are amended to render them applicable to games in which players lack probabilistic sophistication. Within this framework the equilibrium predictions of two-player games with ambiguity-averse and with ambiguity-neutral players are observationally equivalent. This equivalence result does not extend to the case of games with more than two players. A translation of the concept of equilibrium in beliefs to the context of ambiguity aversion yields substantially different predictions – even for the case with just two players.     

Multi-dimensional reference-dependent preferences in sealed-bid auctions – How (most) laboratory experiments differ from the field

We study bidding behavior in first- and second-price sealed-bid auctions with loss-averse agents. Our model predicts overbidding in first-price induced-value auctions consistent with evidence from most laboratory experiments. Substantially different bidding behavior could result in commodity auctions where money and auction item are consumed along different dimensions of the consumption space. Differences also result in second-price auctions. Our study thereby indicates that transferring qualitative behavioral findings from induced-value laboratory experiments to the field may be problematic if subjects are loss-averse.     

Bidding in private-value auctions with uncertain values

Auctions are often used to sell idiosyncratic goods difficult for potential bidders to value ex ante. Laboratory auctions with uncertainty over final values in this experiment resulted in 18% and 27% of bids above the expected value of the item in private-value first-price and English auctions, respectively. Risk-seeking preferences as measured on an individual decision task cannot explain overbidding and the first-price auction results suggest that risk aversion may not be a good explanation for bidding behavior observed with certain values. Several candidate explanations fail to explain overbidding, rather it appears to stem from some bidders who are prone to overbidding. Relative to first-price auctions, the size and frequency of overbids are significantly larger in English auctions, while more English auctions are won by overbidders. Differences between the formats appear to be driven by the dynamic nature of English auctions which is consistent with popular notions of “auction fever.”     

Quantal Response Equilibrium and Overbidding in Private-Value Auctions

This paper applies the quantal response equilibrium (QRE) model to study overbidding in private-values auctions. Experimental evidence shows that the prevalence of overbidding depends on the cost of overbidding relative to underbidding, as predicted theoretically. We use QRE as an error structure to estimate parameters of several competing models of overbidding. A QRE model based on risk averse bidders closely tracks the exact distribution of bids. The estimated parameters are significant and consistent across treatments. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C92, D44.     

Half empty, half full and why we can agree to disagree forever

Aumann [Aumann R., 1976. Agreeing to disagree. Annals of Statisitics 4, 1236–1239] derives his famous we cannot agree to disagree result under the assumption that people are expected utility (=EU) decision makers. Motivated by empirical evidence against EU theory, we study the possibility of agreeing to disagree within the framework of Choquet expected utility (=CEU) theory which generalizes EU theory by allowing for ambiguous beliefs. As our first main contribution, we show that people may well agree to disagree if their Bayesian updating of ambiguous beliefs is psychologically biased in our sense. Remarkably, this finding holds regardless of whether people with identical priors apply the same psychologically biased Bayesian update rule or not. As our second main contribution, we develop a formal model of Bayesian learning under ambiguity. As a key feature of our approach the posterior subjective beliefs do, in general, not converge to “true” probabilities which is in line with psychological evidence against converging learning behavior. This finding thus formally establishes that CEU decision makers may even agree to disagree in the long-run despite the fact that they always received the same information.     

Dominant Strategy Adoption and Bidders' Experience with Pricing Rules

Truthful revelation is a dominant strategy in both English (oral ascending bid) and second-price sealed-bid private-values auctions. Controlled observations of English auctions are largely consistent with the dominant strategy prediction, but laboratory second-price auctions exhibit substantial and persistent overbidding, even with prior experience. However, the experience of having bid in an English auction has a significant learning effect, moving bidding in subsequent second-price auctions closer to the dominant strategy. I explore two treatments isolating facets of the lessons learned from English auction participation, leading me to the following conclusions. Part of the lesson carried over appears to be considering prices one-by-one, but most of it appears to be a crude awareness that overbidding leads to losses. A claim that English auction experience teaches subjects to recognize the dominant strategy in second-price auctions seems overly optimistic. I introduce a nonparametric technique to test coefficient restrictions when the assumption of normally distributed errors is untenable.     

Optimistic irrationality and overbidding in private value auctions

Bidding one’s value in a second-price, private-value auction is a weakly dominant solution (Vickrey in J Finance 16(1):8–37, 1961), but repeated experimental studies find more overbidding than underbidding. We propose a model of optimistically irrational bidders who understand that there are possible gains and losses associated with higher bids but who may overestimate the additional probability of winning and/or underestimate the potential losses when bidding above value. These bidders may fail to discover the dominant strategy—despite the fact that the dominant strategy only requires rationality from bidders—but respond in a common sense way to out-of-equilibrium outcomes. By varying the monetary consequences of losing money in experimental auctions we observe more overbidding when the cost to losing money is low, and less overbidding when the cost is high. Our findings lend themselves to models in which less than fully rational bidders respond systematically to out-of-equilibrium incentives, and we find that our model better fits the effects of our manipulations than most of the existing models we consider.     

Lossed in translation: an off-the-shelf method to recover probabilistic beliefs from loss-averse agents

Strictly proper scoring rules are designed to truthfully elicit subjective probabilistic beliefs from risk neutral agents. Previous experimental studies have identified two problems with this method: (i) risk aversion causes agents to bias their reports toward the probability of \(1/2\), and (ii) for moderate beliefs agents simply report \(1/2\). Applying a prospect theory model of risk preferences, we show that loss aversion can explain both of these behavioral phenomena. Using the insights of this model, we develop a simple off-the-shelf probability assessment mechanism that encourages loss-averse agents to report true beliefs. In an experiment, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this modification in both eliminating uninformative reports and eliciting true probabilistic beliefs.     

Overbidding in fixed rate tenders—an empirical assessment of alternative explanations

This paper investigates various theories explaining banks’ overbidding in the fixed rate tenders of the European Central Bank (ECB). Using auction data from both the Bundesbank and the ECB, we show that none of the theories can on its own explain the observed overbidding. This implies that the proposed new rules by the ECB, aimed at neutralizing interest rate expectations, would not eliminate overbidding if the rationing rule in the fixed rate tenders remains unchanged.     

Limited Consumer Attention in International Trade

This paper introduces a model of limited consumer attention into an otherwise standard new trade theory model with love‐of‐variety preferences and heterogeneous firms. In this setting, we show that international integration needs not be welfare enhancing if the consumers' capacity to gather and process information is limited. Rather, it intensifies competition for scarce consumer attention, which causes mutual overbidding of producers in their advertising expenditures. The mutual overbidding renders advertising—which is informative in principle—wasteful and diverts purchases to imported goods at an inefficient scale. Wasteful advertising provides scope for policy intervention in the form of an advertising tax. However, if the tax instrument is not allowed to discriminate against foreign producers, it cannot eliminate inefficient diversion of consumer purchases to imports; hence it needs not be successful in securing gains from international integration in this framework.     

Measuring agents’ reaction to private and public information in games with strategic complementarities

In games with strategic complementarities, public information about the state of the world has a larger impact on equilibrium actions than private information of the same precision, because public signals are more informative about the likely behavior of others. We present an experiment in which agents’ optimal actions are a weighted average of the fundamental state and their expectations of other agents’ actions. We measure the responses to public and private signals. We find that, on average, subjects put a larger weight on the public signal. In line with theoretical predictions, as the relative weight of the coordination component in a player’s utility increases, players put more weight on the public signal when making their choices. However, the weight is smaller than in equilibrium, which indicates that subjects underestimate the information contained in public signals about other players’ beliefs.     

A Model of Behavior in Coordination Game Experiments

This paper constructs a structural model for behavior in expeiments where subjects play a simple coordination game repeatedly under a rotating partner scheme. The model assumes subjects' actions are stochastic best responses to beliefs about opponents' choices, and these beliefs update as subjects observe actual choices during the experiment. The model accounts for heterogeneity across subjects by regarding prior beliefs as random effects and estimating their distribution. Maximum likelihood estimates from experimental data suggest that distributions of initial beliefs vary across games, but in all games studied imply a convergence dynamic toward risk-dominant equilibrium.     

Animal spirits and monetary policy

I develop a behavioral macroeconomic model in which agents have cognitive limitations. As a result, they use simple but biased rules (heuristics) to forecast future output and inflation. Although the rules are biased, agents learn from their mistakes in an adaptive way. This model produces endogenous waves of optimism and pessimism (??animal spirits??) that are generated by the correlation of biased beliefs. I identify the conditions under which animal spirits arise. I contrast the dynamics of this model with a stylized DSGE-version of the model and I study the implications for monetary policies. I find that strict inflation targeting is suboptimal because it gives more scope for waves of optimism and pessimism to emerge thereby destabilizing output and inflation.     

Uncertainty causes rounding: an experimental study

Rounding is a common phenomenon when subjects provide an answer to an open-ended question, both in experimental tasks and in survey responses. From a statistical perspective, rounding implies that the measured variable is a coarsened version of the underlying continuous target variable. Since the coarsening process is non-random, inference from rounded data is generally biased. Despite the potentially severe consequences of rounding, little is known about its causes. In this paper, we focus on subjects’ uncertainty about the target variable as one potential cause for rounding behavior. We present a novel experimental method that induces uncertainty in a controlled way, thus providing causal evidence for the effect of subjects’ uncertainty on the extent of rounding. Then, we specify and estimate a mixture model that relates uncertainty and rounding. The results suggest that an increase in the exogenous level of uncertainty translates into higher variance of the subjects’ beliefs, which in turn results in more rounding.     

Dubious versus trustworthy faces: what difference does it make for tax compliance?

We find experimental evidence that the decision problem of tax compliance changes if subjects’ declarations are not randomly assessed, but is based on their appearance as captured by pictures of their faces, even if the aggregate audit probability does not change. Some subjects may fear that their picture looks rather dubious, whereas others may believe that their picture looks more trustworthy than average. Depending on these beliefs, they may adjust their compliance decisions. Our experimental design allows us to disentangle these potentially countervailing effects.