Why do people tell the truth? Experimental evidence for pure lie aversion

A recent experimental literature shows that truth-telling is not always motivated by pecuniary motives, and several alternative motivations have been proposed. However, their relative importance in any given context is still not totally clear. This paper investigates the relevance of pure lie aversion, that is, a dislike for lies independent of their consequences. We propose a very simple design where other motives considered in the literature predict zero truth-telling, whereas pure lie aversion predicts a non-zero rate. Thus we interpret the finding that more than a third of the subjects tell the truth as evidence for pure lie aversion. Our design also prevents confounds with another motivation (a desire to act as others expect us to act) not frequently considered but consistent with much existing evidence. We also observe that subjects who tell the truth are more likely to believe that others will tell the truth as well.     

Can people learn rational expectations?

In this note the stability of the rational expectations equilibrium for the Foster and Frierman (1990) version of the Blume and Easley (1982) model is investigated under the assumption that the learning mechanism used by economic agents is based on a selection mechanism on a class of competing models having a physical meaning for the agent and not on the interpolation of models having no clear physical meaning, as it is often the case in the literature on learning rational expectations. It is found that, under the standard assumption that the rational expectations model is in the information set of the uninformed trader no matter his degree of rationality, convergence to it is less likely the higher the uninformed agent's degree of rationality, in a sense to be specified in the paper. Some comments on the result are also provided.     

Are the choices of people stochastically rational? A stochastic test of the number of revealed preference violations

Revealed preference tests are frequently used to check data on the behavior of agents for consistency with economic theory. Unfortunately these tests lack a stochastic element and thus one violation of revealed preference causes a rejection of the behavior being tested. To remedy this lack of a stochastic element in revealed preference analysis, we suggest a general, simple, and intuitive statistical procedure to test whether the observed number of violations is more consistent with a pre-specified type of non-degenerate behavior than with rational behavior. We illustrate this general procedure with an example using uniform random behavior that allows researchers to test whether the actual number of violations of revealed preference is more consistent with uniform random behavior than rational behavior. This statistical test takes advantage of the fact that nonparametric revealed preference tests involve known prices and expenditures. Our illustrative example is accompanied by some Monte Carlo exercises showing that the uniform test performs very well. We implement our test using datasets from two well-known economic experiments. One is a dataset on altruistic choices from Andreoni and Miller (Econometrica 70:737–753, 2002). The second is a dataset on the choices made by subjects who act within a token economy from Battalio et al. (West Econ J 11:411–428, 1973) and Cox (Econ J 107:1054–1078, 1997). We find that for a majority of subjects in one altruistic behavior sub-experiment uniform random behavior can be rejected in favor of rational behavior at the 10 % level of significance. For all but one subject, living in the token economy, uniform random behavior cannot be rejected. For that one subject in the token experiment uniform random behavior is rejected in favor of perverse economic behavior.     

Why do people rate? Theory and evidence on online ratings

The rapid growth of online retail in the last decade has led to widespread use of consumer-generated ratings. This paper theoretically and experimentally identifies influences that drive consumers to rate products and examines how those factors can create distortions in product ratings. By manipulating payoffs and effectively “deactivating” either the buyer or seller side of an artificial laboratory market, raters' behavior is decomposed into buyer-centric and seller-centric components. The cost of providing a rating also plays a major role in influencing rating behavior, with high and low quality sellers being rated more often than those of moderate quality.     

Why do people non-demand reveal in hypothetical double referenda for public goods?

Hypothetical contingent valuation surveys used to elicit values for environmental and other public goods often employ variants of the referendum mechanism due to the cognitive simplicity and familiarity of respondents with this voting format. One variant, the double referendum mechanism, requires respondents to state twice how they would vote for a given policy proposal given their cost of the good. Data from these surveys often exhibit anomalies inconsistent with standard economic models of consumer preferences. There are a number of published explanations for these anomalies, mostly focusing on problems with the second vote. This article investigates which aspects of the hypothetical task affect the degree of nondemand revelation and takes an individual-based approach to identifying people most likely to non-demand reveal. A clear profile emerges from our model of a person who faces a negative surplus i.e. a net loss in the second vote and invokes non self-interested, non financial motivations during the decision process.     

Why do regulators regulate? The case of the southern California gas market

Cross-subsidies often accompany entry regulation. Because cross-subsidies may be efficient or inefficient, they make it harder to find out whether regulation is motivated by public interest or public choice considerations. This paper uses case study methods to illuminate the motives and intentions of California state regulators in a battle over bypass of state-regulated gas utilities during the 1980s. Detailed study reveals that wealth redistribution, rather than economic efficiency, dominated regulators' motives.The author would like to thank John Baden, Robert Bradley, Charles Rowley, several anonymous referees, and participants in the Center for Market Processes colloquium for helpful comments; Mike McDonald, Lisa Johnson, Gary Shiu, Bob Baldini, and Don Dempsey for research assistance; and the Center for Market Processes for financial support.     

Validity Tests of Benefit Transfer – Are We Performing the Wrong Tests?

The validity of environmental benefit transfer has been tested on numerous occasions assuming classical null hypothesis of equality. We argue against this assumption on the basis of theory, which clearly indicates that environmental benefits should be assumed to vary from context to context. We suggest the use of equivalence testing as a more appropriate and a clear compliment to the shortcomings of classical tests. Equivalence tests test the null hypothesis of difference between the original and transferred value estimates. Equivalence tests also combine the concepts of statistical significance and policy significance into one test, by defining an acceptable transfer error prior to the validity test. The results of a published study on validity of benefit transfer are reversed when subjected to an equivalence test.JEL classifications: Q26, C12     

Where do people live longer?

Can historical exposures of non-European countries to European migrants explain part of their current health outcomes? We find that higher European share of the colonial population robustly raised life expectancy and reduced both fertility and infant mortality rates of present-day population in these former colonies. Specifically, after controlling for other plausible determinants, our baseline results imply that, on average, countries at the 95th percentile of the European share of the colonial population, compared to those at the 5th percentile, live 17 years longer, have 1 less child, and experience 54 fewer infant deaths per 1000 live births. A causal interpretation is given to these results by considering various identification strategies. Overall, our results indicate that health fortunes around the world, on average, improved because of European colonial settlers and that differences in the current levels of health performance can be traced back to differential levels of European colonial settlements, where countries that experienced higher influx of colonial Europeans have better health prosperity nowadays than countries with lower inflow of colonial Europeans. A puzzlement arises, however, as countries with no colonial European settlements have outperformed countries with low colonial European settlements. Thus, explaining this phenomenon and exploring how historical migration holds such an enduring influence on the health of nations today opens up an important avenue for future research.     

Why do education vouchers fail at the ballot box?

We compare a uniform voucher regime against the status quo mix of public and private education, focusing on the distribution of welfare gains and losses across households by income. We argue that the topping-up option available under uniform vouchers is not sufficiently valuable for the poorer households, so the voucher regime is defeated at the polls. Our result is robust to partial voter turnout and efficiency differences between public and private schools, but depends critically on the opting-out feature in the current system.     

Why do people place lower weight on advice far from their own initial opinion?

Experimental studies find that the weight put on advice is negatively related to the distance between the advice and the decision-maker’s initial opinion. We show that this can be rational if the decision-maker has imperfect knowledge about the advisor’s competence.     

Why did policy ignore the harbingers of the crisis?

An analysis of the monetary authorities’ reports for 2005 to 2007 reveals that they were well aware of the risks of the financial crisis. They, however, tended to overemphasise the risks outside their control and to neglect those, at least partially under their control. Central banks should and could have acted already in 2005. Academic studies and their own assessments clearly indicated an accumulation of risks. Monetary authorities didn’t react as (1) they believe in self-regulating markets, and (2) in monetary instruments’ ineffectiveness to prevent bubbles, as well as (3) their tendency to assigning an extremely low probability to potential risks. This is not untypical for expert assessments: Risk assessment for complex systems is extremely complicated. If feasible at all, it would require extraordinarily complex techniques to take into account the tight coupling of system components and their complex interaction. This will not be possible in the foreseeable future. As a result reducing the system’s complexity appears to be the only way to reduce the probability and the severity of future financial crises.     

Why do diners tip: rule-of-thumb or valuation of service?

When diners decide how much to tip, is the decision based on social convention or on conscientious appraisal of server productivity? Previous researchers in economics and social psychology are generally inconclusive on this question. A common finding in the literature is that tip size and service quality are unrelated, a result usually obtained from OLS regressions. OLS is only appropriate if service quality is exogenous. It is argued that service quality is very likely endogenous in any regression of tip size; good quality encourages good tips, but server expectations of good tips encourage good quality. This simultaneity is accounted for by jointly estimating percentage tips and customer rankings of service quality on a sample of 247 diners in a Central Minnesota restaurant. Included are explanatory variables consistent with both the social psychology and economic views of tipping. In contrast to previous studies, it is found that service quality significantly affects tip size and when servers expect higher tips, customers rank service quality higher. Also it is found that patronage frequency and coupon redemption have no effect on percentage tips, but server gender influences quality significantly. It is concluded that the results are generally supportive of an economic hypothesis of tipping.     

Why do similar firms export differently?

Eaton et al. (2011) underline that firms with similar production costs, entry costs and demand export to different countries. In this theoretical article, I provide a rationale for this feature of the data. I demonstrate that similar firms exporting differently can be explained by a baseline trade-off between attractiveness and competition that is present in any model with monopolistic competition. I then show that this trade-off also generates valuable theoretical features including distance-related mark-ups, third country effect and equivalence with random utility models.     

Why do promises affect trustworthiness,or do they?

We set out to test whether the effect of promises on trustworthiness derives from the fact that they are made (internal consistency) or that they are received (social obligation). The results of an experimental trust game appeared at first to support the former mechanism. Even when trustee messages are not delivered to trustors, trustees who make a promise are more likely to act trustworthy than those who do not make a promise. However, we subsequently ran a control treatment with restricted (non-promise) communication to examine whether the correlation between promises and trustworthiness is causal. The results show that the absence of promises does not decrease average cooperation rates. This indicates that promises do not induce trustworthiness, they are just more likely to be sent by cooperators than by non-cooperators.     

Why do firms use fixed-term contracts?

Portuguese Economic Journal - In this article we look at how one specific form of temporary employment - employment with fixed-term contracts - fits into employers’ hiring policies. We find...     

A model of boundedly rational “neuro” agents

We consider a model in which each agent in a population chooses one of two options. Each agent does not know what the available options are and can choose an option only after observing another agent who has already chosen that option. In addition, the agents’ preferences over the two options are correlated. An agent can either imitate an observed agent or wait until he meets two agents who made different choices, in which case he can compare their choices and choose accordingly. A novel feature of the model is that agents observe not only the choices made by others, but also some information about the process that led them to those choices. We study two cases: In the first, an agent notes whether the observed agent imitated others or whether he actually compared the available alternatives. In the second, an agent notes whether the observed agent’s decision was hasty or not. It is shown that in equilibrium the probability of making a mistake is higher in the second case and that the existence of these nonstandard “neuro” observations systematically biases the equilibrium distribution of choices.     

How do advertised brands benefit from private labels? An application of rational expectations models

Private labels have traditionally been viewed as a threat to advertised brands. Contrary to traditional wisdom, this study uses a two-asset rational expectations model to show that advertised brands could benefit from private labels. While the manufacturer’s advertising creates product differentiation, the retailer’s synchronous pricing strategy further enhances the product differentiation and raises profits as well as the efficiency of price discounts for the advertised brand. In addition, the existence of private labels improves the advertising efficiency, especially for newly introduced brands. The economic role of private labels is not limited to taking a free ride on the manufacturer’s advertising efforts, and this role cannot be replaced by another advertised brand.