Experimental and behavioral economics [illustrated edition] 0762311940, 9780762311941, 9780080460390

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EXPERIMENTAL AND BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS

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ADVANCES IN APPLIED MICROECONOMICS Series Editor: Michael R. Baye

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ADVANCES IN APPLIED MICROECONOMICS

VOLUME 13

ADVANCES IN APPLIED MICROECONOMICS EDITED BY

JOHN MORGAN University of California, Berkeley, USA

2005

Amsterdam – Boston – Heidelberg – London – New York – Oxford Paris – San Diego – San Francisco – Singapore – Sydney – Tokyo iii

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r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright by Elsevier Ltd, and the following terms and conditions apply to its use: Photocopying Single photocopies of single chapters may be made for personal use as allowed by national copyright laws. Permission of the Publisher and payment of a fee is required for all other photocopying, including multiple or systematic copying, copying for advertising or promotional purposes, resale, and all forms of document delivery. Special rates are available for educational institutions that wish to make photocopies for non-profit educational classroom use. Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone (+44) 1865 843830, fax (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: [email protected]. Requests may also be completed on-line via the Elsevier homepage (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions). In the USA, users may clear permissions and make payments through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA; phone: (+1) (978) 7508400, fax: (+1) (978) 7504744, and in the UK through the Copyright Licensing Agency Rapid Clearance Service (CLARCS), 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP, UK; phone: (+44) 20 7631 5555; fax: (+44) 20 7631 5500. Other countries may have a local reprographic rights agency for payments. Derivative Works Tables of contents may be reproduced for internal circulation, but permission of the Publisher is required for external resale or distribution of such material. Permission of the Publisher is required for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations. Electronic Storage or Usage Permission of the Publisher is required to store or use electronically any material contained in this work, including any chapter or part of a chapter. Except as outlined above, no part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the Publisher. Address permissions requests to: Elsevier’s Rights Department, at the fax and e-mail addresses noted above. Notice No responsibility is assumed by the Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent verification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made. First edition 2005 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0-7623-1194-0 ISSN: 0278-0984 (Series)

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CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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PREFACE

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GAIN AND LOSS ULTIMATUMS Nancy Buchan, Rachel Croson, Eric Johnson and George Wu

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BEHAVIORAL ASPECTS OF LEARNING IN SOCIAL NETWORKS: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY Syngjoo Choi, Douglas Gale and Shachar Kariv

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COMMUNICATION AND EFFICIENCY IN COORDINATION GAME EXPERIMENTS Anthony Burton, Graham Loomes and Martin Sefton

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TRUST BUT VERIFY: MONITORING IN INTERDEPENDENT RELATIONSHIPS Maurice E. Schweitzer and Teck H. Ho

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DO LIBERALS PLAY NICE? THE EFFECTS OF PARTY AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY IN PUBLIC GOODS AND TRUST GAMES Lisa R. Anderson, Jennifer M. Mellor and Jeffrey Milyo

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AN ECONOMICS WIND TUNNEL: THE SCIENCE OF BUSINESS ENGINEERING Kay-Yut Chen

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EXPERIMENTS ON AUCTION VALUATION AND ENDOGENOUS ENTRY Richard Engelbrecht-Wiggans and Elena Katok

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Lisa R. Anderson

Department of Economics, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA

Nancy Buchan

School of Business, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

Anthony Burton

Department of Health, Richmond House, London, UK

Kay-Yut Chen

Decision Technology Department, Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA, USA

Syngjoo Choi

Department of Economics, New York University, New York, NY, USA

Rachel Croson

Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Richard College of Business, University of Illinois, Engelbrecht-Wiggans Champaign, IL, USA Douglas Gale

Department of Economics, New York University, New York, NY, USA

Teck H. Ho

Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

Eric Johnson

Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

Shachar Kariv

Department of Economics, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

Elena Katok

Smeal College of Business, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA

Graham Loomes

School of Economics and Social Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK vii

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Jennifer M. Mellor

Department of Economics, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA

Jeffrey Milyo

Department of Economics and Truman School of Public Affairs, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

Maurice E. Schweitzer

Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Martin Sefton

School of Economics, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

George Wu

Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

PREFACE As the demand to substantiate predictions from economic theory with causal empirical evidence increases, economists have begun relying on controlled laboratory experiments. As this field has blossomed, it has provided evidence confirming some of the key predictions of economic theory, exposing some of the weaker theoretical predictions, and highlighting the importance of non-pecuniary incentives such as trust and reciprocity in economic decision-making. This has resulted in a symbiotic relationship where experimental evidence is not only used to support theoretical conclusions but has pointed economists into bold and exciting new areas of investigation. In this volume I am pleased to present some of the most recent stimulating work in this field. The first three chapters provide a fresh look at some of the classical issues in experimental economics. These papers provide novel insights into psychology in ultimatum games, the impact of social interaction on learning, and communication in coordination games. The next two chapters look at how experiments can illuminate our understanding of what determines trust. These papers examine how the monitoring within an organization influences trust as well as examining how individual political ideologies are related to an individual’s level of trust. The final two chapters show how experiments can be fruitfully applied to vertical relationships and auction design, two of the most important areas in contemporary contract theory. I am especially proud of the diversity and excellence of all of the contributions to this volume. These authors come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds from some of the world’s leading academic institutions. I feel that this volume is an exceptional example of the returns to cross-disciplinary interaction and I am very proud of what these authors have accomplished. I am also very grateful to Elsevier Press and especially Valerie Teng for providing a visible and important forum for disseminating these new and important findings.

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GAIN AND LOSS ULTIMATUMS Nancy Buchan, Rachel Croson, Eric Johnson and George Wu ABSTRACT This chapter investigates the difference between ultimatum games over gains and over losses. Although previous research in decision making has found that individuals treat losses and gains differently, losses have not previously been investigated in strategic situations. In the field, however, the problem of negotiating over losses is as unavoidable and problematic as the problem of negotiating over gains. In addition, data on how we bargain over losses can shed some theoretical light on fairness preferences. Two experiments use within-subject designs, the first in the U.S. and the second in the U.S., China and Japan. We find that offers and demands are higher in losses than in gains, and that these results hold across the three countries. We adapt Bolton’s (1991) model of fairness to explain the results. Specifically, we extend prospect theory’s loss aversion to unfairness, suggesting that unfairness in losses looms larger than unfairness in gains.

1. INTRODUCTION In the past decade, the ultimatum game has been the source of great empirical and theoretical interest. One attraction is the game’s simplicity: it Experimental and Behavioral Economics Advances in Applied Microeconomics, Volume 13, 1–23 Copyright r 2005 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0278-0984/doi:10.1016/S0278-0984(05)13001-6

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is remarkably easy for subjects to grasp and almost as simple for experimenters to conduct. More substantively, the ultimatum game is a building block for understanding more complex forms of bargaining behavior (Stahl, 1972; Rubinstein, 1982) as well as posted price markets (Thaler, 1988). Finally, the game sheds light on fairness and equity, two factors which have become increasingly important components in models of market and organizational transactions (Solow, 1979; Akerlof, 1982; Frank, 1985; Mellers & Baron, 1993). In the standard ultimatum game, player 1 (the proposer) makes an offer to player 2 (the responder). The offer consists of division of a sum of money (the pie, p) between the two players. Usually this offer takes the form of ‘‘player 2 can have x, player 1 will get p x:’’ The responder can either accept or reject the offer made. If she accepts, the pie is divided as proposed and the game ends. If she rejects, neither player receives any money, and the game also ends. The unique subgame-perfect equilibrium of the ultimatum game (assuming pure self-interest) is for proposers to make the smallest possible offer, say : In turn, responders will accept ; since  is better than nothing.1 The ultimatum game has been studied through a variety of experimental methods (see summaries in Thaler, 1988; Gu¨th & Tietz, 1990; Camerer & Thaler, 1995; Roth, 1995; Camerer, 2003). In every study, actual behavior deviates substantially from the equilibrium prediction: the average proposer makes offers of 40–50% of the pie. These non-zero offers are made for good reason, since responders reject small but positive offers, again contrary to the predictions of game theory. This chapter investigates the difference between ultimatum games over gains and over losses. Previous research suggests that subjects in individual decision-making studies treat losses and gains differently (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Thaler & Johnson, 1990; Tversky & Kahneman, 1986, 1991, 1992). However, losses are typically not used in experiments and have not been investigated in strategic situations. There are two reasons to extend the ultimatum game to losses. First, the problem of negotiating over losses is as unavoidable and as problematic as the problem of negotiating over gains. Consider, for example, insurance companies negotiating compensation for damages, joint venture partners bargaining over the division of capital expenditures, business colleagues dividing tasks or committee assignments, or debt holders negotiating over liabilities. A second reason to consider losses is to shed some theoretical light on fairness. Ultimatum results have fueled alternative theories which

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‘‘generalize’’ game theory by formally incorporating desires for fairness into the utility function of agents (e.g. Bolton, 1991; Rabin, 1993; Fehr & Schmidt, 1999; Bolton & Ockenfels, 2000). Examining variants of the ultimatum game is important for theorizing, because the new results can suggest avenues for extending or correcting these generalized theories. Although negotiating over bads is common in practice and important to theory, relevant literature is sparse. A number of studies compare third party allocations over goods and bads (e.g. Griffith & Sell, 1988; Kayser & Lamm, 1980; Lamm, Kayser, & Schanz, 1983), in contrast we examine interested party bargaining over bads. This paper reports the results of two experiments in ultimatum games over losses and over gains; the first concerns data from a strictly American subject pool and only one decision of one pair is chosen for payment (thus the design is somewhere between an experiment and a survey), while the second is drawn from subjects in three countries in a more traditional laboratory setting where all participants are paid for all their decisions. While the experiments were run using different subject populations and procedures, the results are remarkably consistent. Ultimatum bargaining over losses elicits higher demands on the part of responders and higher offers on the part of proposers than does ultimatum bargaining over gains. We explain the results by extending the intuition of loss aversion to unfairness. If responders are more unfairness averse for losses than gains, responders will be more demanding in the loss game than in the gains game, and this increase in demands makes proposers self-interestedly more generous. We describe the two experiments and their results in Sections 2 and 3. In Section 4, we provide a theoretical explanation of our results based on prospect theory. We conclude in Section 5.

2. EXPERIMENT 1 2.1. Experimental Design Participants in this experiment were 74 MBA students who were enrolled in one section of a required first-year course. Each subject received a packet containing a set of four questions, counterbalanced for order.2 The instructor asked the participants to read through the packet and to record their responses in the correct spaces. Subjects were told that one pair of them would be chosen at random in the next class to play the gains game for real, in accordance with the answers they recorded that day. Each participant

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then recorded their offers and demands for the two games. All participants played both roles of both games yielding four responses per subject, therefore ‘‘before’’ we will use within-subject comparisons. The questions concerned a $100 gains ultimatum game and a $100 loss ultimatum game. Both games were run using the strategy method (Selten, 1967). In the gains game, proposers stated how much they wished to offer responders, as described above. Responders recorded their minimum acceptable demand; the amount they would need to receive in order to accept an offer. If the proposer’s offer was at least as large as the responder’s demand, then the offer was accepted and the responder received what the proposer offered (not her own demand), while the proposer received the residual. If the responder’s demand was greater than the proposer’s offer, then the offer was rejected and both parties received $0. For the loss game, the identical game is constructed by subtracting $100 from all payoffs. In the transformed game, the proposer’s offer indicated how much the responder should pay of a $100 loss. The responder indicated the maximum she would be willing to pay. If the responder was willing to pay at least as much as the proposer suggested that she pay, the costs were divided according to the proposer’s proposal. If the proposal was higher than the responder’s willingness-to-pay, then there was no deal and both parties paid $100. All participants played both roles of both games. Figure 1 depicts the two games in the strategy-method format. The equilibrium of the transformed game is simply a transformed equilibrium of the original game: the proposer offers that the responder pays $99.99 and the responder accepts, leaving the responder with 1b of surplus and the proposer with $99.99 worth of surplus. Note that accepting this offer and paying $99.99 is better for the responder than rejecting the proposer’s offer and paying $100. An example may be illuminating here. Assume the proposer offers that the responder pays $70 out of the $100 loss and that the responder indicates that she would be willing to pay at most $80 out of the $100 loss. Since the responder is willing to pay at least as much as the proposer suggests, the responder accepts the proposer’s offer of $70 by paying it while the proposer pays $30. However, if instead the responder had indicated she would be willing to pay at most $50 of the $100 loss, then she would reject the proposer’s offer of her paying $70. Then both players pay a full $100. Note that in both treatments there is $100 of surplus to be divided between the two parties. In the gains treatment, it is $100 of gains. In the loss

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Proposer makes offer (responder receives $x)

$0

Proposer makes offer (responder pays $x)

$0

$100

$100

$x

$x

Responder demand (responder receives>$y)

Responder demand (responder pays < $y)

Offer >demand x>y

Offer