Search

We examine under what conditions people provide accurate feedback to others. We use feedback regarding attractiveness, a trait people care about, and for which objective information is hard to obtain. Our results show that people avoid giving accurate face-to-face feedback to less attractive individuals, even if lying in this context comes at a monetary cost to both the person who gives the feedback and the receiver. A substantial increase of these costs does not increase the accuracy of feedback. However, when feedback is provided anonymously, the aversion to giving negative feedback is reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper experimentally explores how compositional grammars in artificial codes emerge and are sustained. In a communication game with no conflict of interest, the sender sends a message that is an arbitrary string from available symbols with no prior meaning to indicate an abstract geometrical figure to the receiver. We find strong evidence from the laboratory for the emergence of compositional grammars in the subjects' common codes that facilitate learning efficiency. Moreover, when there is a scarcity of symbols in the repertoire, a few groups in our experiments developed languages with positional compositionality, meaning the same symbol has different interpretations depending on its position in a string, whereas some other groups developed language structures that are not compositional but still efficient in communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop, and experimentally test, models of informal agreements. Agents are assumed to be honest but suffer costs of overcoming temptations. We extend two classical bargaining solutions – split-the-difference and deal-me-out – to this informal agreement setting. For each solution there are two natural ways to do this, leaving us with 2 × 2 models to explore. In the experiment, a temptations-constrained version of deal-me-out emerges as the clear winner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We theoretically and experimentally examine the effects from adding a simple, empirically relevant action to a repeated partnership, the option to walk away. Manipulating both the value of the outside option, and its relative distribution among the partners, we examine the behavior of human subjects in a repeated prisoners' dilemma. In particular, we examine the degree of cooperation and the form of punishments used. Our findings indicate that cooperation rates are broadly unaffected by the value of the common outside option, but that the selection of supporting punishments—in-relationship defections or walking-away—are dictated by individual rationality. In contrast to the symmetric results, when outside options for partners are asymmetric we find stark selection effects over cooperation, with the potential for very high and very low efficiency, dependent on the precise division rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a model that relates self-control to cooperation patterns in social dilemmas, and we test the model in a laboratory public goods experiment. As predicted, we find a robust association between stronger self-control and higher levels of cooperation, and the association is at its strongest when the decision maker's risk aversion is low and the cooperation levels of others high. We interpret the pattern as evidence for the notion that individuals may experience an impulse to act in self-interest-and that cooperative behavior benefits from self-control. Free-riders differ from other contributor types only in their tendency not to have identified a self-control conflict in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether and to what extent group identity plays a role in peer effects on risk behaviour. We run a laboratory experiment in which different levels of group identity are induced through different matching protocols (random or based on individual painting preferences) and the possibility to interact with group members via an online chat in a group task. Risk behaviour is measured by using the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task and peer influence is introduced by giving subjects feedback regarding group members' previous decisions. We find that subjects are affected by their peers when taking decisions and that group identity influences the magnitude of peer effects: painting preferences matching significantly reduces the heterogeneity in risk behaviour compared with random matching. On the other hand, introducing a group task has no significant effect on behaviour, possibly because interaction does not always contribute to enhancing group identity. Finally, relative riskiness within the group matters and individuals whose peers are riskier than they are take on average riskier decisions, even when controlling for regression to the mean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present experimental evidence regarding individual and group decisions over time. Static and longitudinal methods are combined to test four conditions on time preferences: impatience, stationarity, age independence, and dynamic consistency. Decision making in groups should favor coordination via communication about voting intentions. We find that individuals are neither patient nor consistent, that groups are both patient and highly consistent, and that information exchange between participants helps groups converge to stable decisions. Finally we provide additional evidence showing that our results are driven by the specific role of groups and not by either repeated choices or individual preferences when choosing for other subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many important decisions are made under stress and they often involve risky alternatives. There has been ample evidence that stress influences decision making, but still very little is known about whether individual attitudes to risk change with exposure to acute stress. To directly evaluate the causal effect of psychosocial stress on risk attitudes, we adopt an experimental approach in which we randomly expose participants to a stressor in the form of a standard laboratory stress-induction procedure: the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups. Risk preferences are elicited using a multiple price list format that has been previously shown to predict risk-oriented behavior out of the laboratory. Using three different measures (salivary cortisol levels, heart rate and multidimensional mood questionnaire scores), we show that stress was successfully induced on the treatment group. Our main result is that for men, the exposure to a stressor (intention-to-treat effect, ITT) and the exogenously induced psychosocial stress (the average treatment effect on the treated, ATT) significantly increase risk aversion when controlling for their personal characteristics. The estimated treatment difference in certainty equivalents is equivalent to 69 % (ITT) and 89 % (ATT) of the gender-difference in the control group. The effect on women goes in the same direction, but is weaker and insignificant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salespersons often spend time and money giving prospective buyers compliments such as kind words, meals and gifts. Though prior research has shown that compliments will influence a prospective buyer's decision, it is unknown the extent to which salespersons should make these investments. In this paper, we develop an analytical model to examine how seller and buyer characteristics affect the equilibrium provision of compliments by the seller. We establish that the optimal magnitude of compliments is non-monotonic in the buyer's sensitivity to compliments. We identify conditions for when a seller of a high-quality product will offer greater (or lesser) compliments than a seller of a lower quality product. We show that, under certain conditions, an uninformed buyer earns greater utility than a buyer who knows the quality of the seller's product. The findings have implications for sellers in their choice of compliments and buyers in the inferences they draw from the compliments received. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the transmission of risk attitudes in a unique survey of mothers and children in which both participated in an incentivized risk preference elicitation task. We document that risk preferences are correlated between mothers and children when the children are just 7–8 years old. This correlation is only present for daughters. We further show that a measure of maternal involvement is a strong moderator of the association between mothers’ and daughters’ risk tolerance. This is consistent with a role for socialization and parental investment in the intergenerational transmission of risk preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new partial equilibrium theory of price adjustment, based on consumer loss aversion. In line with prospect theory, the consumers’ perceived utility losses from price increases are weighted more heavily than the perceived utility gains from price decreases of equal magnitude. Price changes are evaluated relative to an endogenous reference price, which depends on the consumers’ rational price expectations from the recent past. By implication, demand responses are more elastic for price increases than for price decreases and thus firms face a downward-sloping demand curve that is kinked at the consumers’ reference price. Firms adjust their prices flexibly in response to variations in this demand curve, in the context of an otherwise standard dynamic neoclassical model of monopolistic competition. The resulting theory of price adjustment is starkly at variance with past theories. We find that – in line with the empirical evidence – prices are more sluggish upwards than downwards in response to temporary demand shocks, while they are more sluggish downwards than upwards in response to permanent demand shocks. The degree of these asymmetries, in turn, depends on the size of the shock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides field evidence from India examining changes in electricity consumption in response to various behavioral interventions. I study the impact of (i) weekly reports with peer comparisons of electricity use; (ii) reports augmented with monetary incentives to reduce consumption and (iii) price variation. I estimate consumption changes using a randomized control trial in conjunction with a quasi-experiment. Households provided reports alone reduced summer season consumption by 7 percent. Price elasticity identified from cross-sectional and time series variation was estimated at −0.56. Against this benchmark, the impact of peer comparisons alone was equivalent to increasing tariffs by about 12.5 percent. Counter-intuitively, when weekly reports were augmented with monetary incentives rewarding electricity conservation, households no longer reduced consumption. Households receiving reports also show higher price elasticity relative to controls. These results provide new evidence identifying the response of developing country consumers to behavioral interventions while examining the interaction of prices, incentives and information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous experiments have found that subjecting participants to cognitive load leads to poorer decision making, consistent with dual-system models of behavior. Rather than taxing the cognitive system, this paper reports the results of an experiment that takes a complementary approach: arousing the emotional system. The results indicate that exposure to arousing visual stimuli as compared to neutral images has a negligible impact on performance in arithmetic tasks, impatience, risk taking in the domain of losses, and snack choice although we find that arousal modestly increases risk-taking in the gains domain and increases susceptibility to anchoring effects. We find the effect of arousal on decision making to be smaller and less consistent then the effect of increased cognitive load for the same tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contrasts the mental and physical health impacts of vulnerability and economic insecurity. An individual is vulnerable if they are at risk of future absolute material deprivation, while they are insecure if they are threatened by losses in relative status. Using data from the first eleven waves of the Australian HILDA panel, we generate four alternative measures of real or perceived downside economic risk and employ panel data models to estimate their impacts on SF-36 mental and physical health indices. We test our hypotheses using a series of polynomial interactions which allow the effect sizes to vary non-linearly with income. Baseline estimates show that economic risks have consistently negative consequences for both mental and physical health, with the former effect being around three times the size of the latter. However our main finding is that increasing incomes do little to mitigate the sensitivity of health to these risks. This suggests it is mostly the prospect of loss rather than deprivation that impacts upon wellbeing. The finding is important as it helps distinguish between competing models (i.e. Beveridge vs Bismarck) for social insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate popularity functions for the Austrian parties Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), Social Democrats (SPÖ) and Austrian Freedom party (FPÖ) between 1987 and 2010 (using annual data) as well as vote functions for the same Austrian parties in the 86 election districts in the national elections in 1999, 2002, 2006 and 2008. In most cases we find a statistically significant and theoretically predicted influence of three economic variables, namely the unemployment rate, inflation rate and growth rate of income, on both popularity and voting behavior. However, this influence is not robust and shows a tendency to decline over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers implicitly incorporate their perceptions of products into their decision processes, yet little research has explicitly focused on how those perceptions influence demand for meat. This study incorporates taste, health, and safety perceptions into a discrete choice experiment for meat products at a grocery store. Our results indicate that taste is the most important perception as a 1-unit increase in the perceived tastiness (on a −5 to +5 scale) of a food product leads to a $0.60 increase in willingness to pay, whereas equivalent increases in perceived health and safety lead to $0.31 and $0.21 increases, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of social comparison on risk taking behavior. In our theoretical framework, decision makers evaluate the consequences of their choices relative to both their own and their peers' conditions. We test experimentally whether the position in the social ranking affects risk attitudes. Subjects interact in a simulated workplace environment where they perform a work task, receive possibly different wages, and then undertake a risky decision that may produce an extra gain. We find that social comparison matters for risk attitudes. Subjects are more risk averse in the presence of small social gain than social loss. In addition, risk aversion is decreasing in the size of the social gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on recent developments in the theory of choice under uncertainty to model anomalies in intertemporal choice. Cognitive limitations leading to hyperbolic discounting and magnitude effects in intertemporal choice may be described in terms of bounded awareness, and represented by phenomena familiar from visualization software such as Google Earth. Cognitive limits on visualization impose constraints on both the area being viewed and the level of detail of the view, with a trade-off between the two. Increasing detail at the expense of limiting the area viewed may be described as zooming. Data from a field experiment were used to assess the theory with an incentive-compatible multiple price list approach involving magnitude levels of 5x, 10x and 20x the basic magnitude level with time horizons of one, three, six and 12 months. Without zooming adjustments in base consumption, very strong hyperbolic and magnitude effects were found, and present bias could not explain the hyperbolic effects. The zooming model provides an explanation of what appear to be significant intertemporal anomalies in the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to examine the role of consumer confidence on the relationship between two forms of wealth-housing and financial-and four categories of consumption expenditure, which include total consumption, service, durable goods and nondurable goods consumption. This paper uses U.S. quarterly data from 1978 to 2012 for its analysis. Applying the FMOLS estimation method, the results show that consumer confidence has a positive effect on the association between housing wealth and consumption expenditure, whereas its effect on the association between financial wealth and consumption expenditure is negative. The implications of these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air transport Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions estimates differ greatly, depending on the calculation method employed. Among the IPCC, ICAO, DEFRA, and BrighterPlanet calculation methods, the largest estimate may be up to 4.5 times larger than the smallest. Such heterogeneity – and ambiguity over the true estimate – confuses the consumer, undermining the credibility of emissions estimates in general. Consequently, GHG emissions estimates do not currently appear on the front page of flight search-engine results. Even where there are differences between alternative flights’ emissions, this information is unavailable to consumers at the point of choice. When external considerations rule out alternative travel-modes, the relative ranking of flight options’ GHG emissions is sufficient to inform consumers’ decision making. Whereas widespread agreement on a gold standard remains elusive, the present study shows that the principal GHG emissions calculation methods produce consistent rankings within specific route-structure classes . Hence, for many consumers, the flight identified as most GHG efficient is not sensitive to the specific calculation method employed. But unless GHG emissions information is displayed at the point of decision, it cannot enter into consumers’ decision making. A credible and ambiguity-free alternative would thus be to display GHG ranking information on the front page of flight search-engine results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report data from a laboratory experiment demonstrating that having to announce one’s own future possibly dishonest actions can deter misconduct. Further, results from independent evaluators suggest that a possibly dishonest action taken after it is announced is more likely to be perceived as dishonest than an equivalent action absent the announcement. Consequently, requiring announcements promotes honest actions among people who care about maintaining an honest self-image. Finally, a type-classification analysis shows that the mixture of “maximum cheating” and “honest” types best characterize the cheating behavior, suggesting that “incomplete cheating” reported in the literature is not an intrinsic preference for being honest, but may rather be due to a preference for appearing honest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many economically relevant activities are executed under notable time pressures. Incentivized deadlines are often the reason people feel pressured. In such an environment, individual preferences can predict performance. Through a laboratory experiment, we examine the predictive power of individual loss aversion on performance under deadline-dependent incentives. Participants worked on a real effort task under two payoff-equivalent contracts framed in bonus and malus terms. The results show lower performance for individuals with high loss aversion when working under a malus contract. These individuals needed more time to reply and were less able to avoid maluses than other individuals. Choking can explain this observed behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trends of subjective well-being (SWB) in transition countries are peculiar: they show substantial changes that are more strongly correlated with the trends of GDP than in other developed countries. This paper examines the role of the trends of GDP and of social trust in predicting the trends of well-being. We find that the strength of the relationship between social trust and SWB over the medium-term is comparable to that of GDP. We conclude that in the medium-term, even in countries where material concerns strongly affect well-being, social trust is a powerful predictor of the trends of SWB. However, in the short run the relationship between social trust and SWB does not hold and GDP stands out as the only significant correlate of SWB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the possibility that cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma is fostered by people's voluntary enhancement of their own vulnerability. The vulnerability of a player determines the effectiveness of possible punishment by the other. In the “Gradual” mechanism, players may condition their incremental enhancements of their vulnerability on the other's choices. In the “Leap” mechanism, they unconditionally choose their vulnerability. In our experiment, subjects only learn to cooperate when either one of these mechanisms is allowed. In agreement with theory, subjects aiming for cooperation choose higher vulnerability levels in Gradual than in Leap, which maps into higher mutual cooperation levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reciprocity can be a powerful motivation for human behaviour. Scholars have argued that it is relevant in the context of private provision of public goods. We examine whether reciprocity can resolve the associated coordination problem. The interaction of reciprocity with cost-sharing is critical. Neither cost-sharing nor reciprocity in isolation can solve the problem, but together they have that potential. We introduce new network notions of reciprocity relations to better understand this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

De Bondt and Thaler (Int J Fore 9(3):355-371, 1995) point out that while von Neumann-Morgenstern (1947) utility functions, the axioms of cardinal utility (Copeland and Weston 1988), risk aversion, rational expectations, etc., have formed the basis for theories of choice under uncertainty, research in behavioral science, has either challenged these foundations or outright rejected them. Requiring investors to be utility maximizers, and using an approach similar to Scott-Horvath (J Financ 35(4):915-9¸1980), and arguing investors' to have different utility for partial upper and partial lower moments, this paper proves that loss, regret, and myopic loss aversion and sign effects, is in fact central to understanding of rational behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we highlight the heterogeneity of agents in Schumpeter's theory. Because of its centrality in Schumpeter's theory, we argue that agent heterogeneity should also be a key element for economic policy informed by Schumpeter's theory. Schumpeter considered agents' habits as a particularly important source of heterogeneity. We show how Schumpeter's notion of habits is closely related to modern work on habits, and draw on recent research to elaborate theory that can provide the foundation for Schumpeterian economic policy. We argue that heterogeneity of habits can be a crucial building block and foundation of Schumpeterian economic policy: it offers a target for policy interventions that is different from incentives or information. This target is potentially as powerful as incentives or information, which only influence intentions rather than influencing behavior directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the determinants of access to finance by firms residing in 42 Islamic countries. Firm-specific characteristics, such as size, sector, legal status and export status are found to be robust predictors of financing constraints of firms. Small-size firms appear to face more binding financing constraints, whilst firms operating in manufacturing and focusing on exports appear to face lower constraints. The auditing of accounts, the location of operations and ownership structure appear significant with a varying effect on direction. Differences are documented on the role of firm-specific characteristics between Islamic and non-Islamic countries. Both the absolute and relative size of Islamic bank assets is a significant predictor of firms’ financing constraints. The results add new insights on the role of non-economic institutions, social and cultural factors across regions in predicting financing constraints of firms in Islamic countries. Effective financial inclusion reform must focus on small-size, introverted and services-oriented firms operating in some distance from the center as well as understand the divergent role of institutions, social structures and culture within the Islamic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conduct a framed field experiment among patients and doctors to test whether the two groups have similar risk and time preferences. We elicit risk and time preferences using multiple price list tests and their adaptations to the healthcare context. Risk and time preferences are compared in terms of switching points in the tests and the structurally estimated behavioural parameters. We find that doctors and patients significantly differ in their time preferences: doctors discount future outcomes less heavily than patients. We find no evidence that doctors and patients systematically differ in their risk preferences in the healthcare domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are vote choices instrumental or expressive? This paper studies the effects of the ban in the Basque Country of a political party, Batasuna, which continued to contest the elections after its ban by calling for a null vote, that has expressive but no instrumental value. Exploiting the heterogeneity in the pre-ban presence of Batasuna and in the enforcement of the ban across municipalities and elections, I find that null voters are two-thirds of the potential Batasuna voters in a regular election, indicating that expressive motivations alone explain two-thirds of the votes for this party. Null votes lower the electoral threshold and raise the instrumental incentives for the remaining voters to vote for smaller parties, but the behavioral effect of the ban on the fragmentation of city councils is close to zero. In a region with salient identity politics, the results are consistent with prevalent expressive voting, in contrast with the common assumption of purely instrumental voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of approaches have been implemented to address the rising obesity epidemic, with limited success. I consider the success of weight loss efforts among a group of highly motivated people: those required to lose weight in order to qualify for a life-saving kidney transplantation. Out of 246 transplantation centers, I identified 156 (63%) with explicit body mass index (BMI) requirements for transplantation, ranging from 30 to 50 kg/m 2 . Using the United States national registry of transplant candidates, I examine outcomes for 29,608 obese deceased-donor transplant recipients between 1990 and 2010. I use value-added models to deal with potential endogeneity of center choice, in addition to correcting for sample selection bias arising from focusing on transplant recipients. Outcome variables measure BMI level and weight change (in BMI) between initial listing and transplantation. I hypothesize that those requiring weight loss to qualify for kidney transplantation will be most likely to lose weight. I find that the probability of severe and morbid obesity (BMI ≥ 35 kg/m 2 ) decreases by 4 percentage points and the probability of patients achieving any weight loss increases by 22 percentage points at centers with explicit BMI eligibility criteria. Patients are also 13 percentage points more likely to accomplish clinically relevant weight loss of at least 5% of baseline BMI by transplantation at these centers. Nonetheless, I estimate an average decrease in BMI of only 1.7 kg/m 2 for those registered at centers with BMI requirements. Further analyses suggest stronger intervention effects for patients whose BMI at listing exceeds thresholds as the distance from their BMI to the thresholds increases. Even under circumstances with great potential returns for weight loss, transplant candidates exhibit modest weight-loss. This suggests that, even in high-stakes environments, weight loss remains a challenge for the obese, and altering individual incentives may not be sufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we provide new evidence showing that fair behavior is intuitive to most people. We find a strong association between a short response time and fair behavior in the dictator game. This association is robust to controls that take account of the fact that response time might be affected by the decision-maker's cognitive ability and swiftness. The experiment was conducted with a large and heterogeneous sample recruited from the general population in Denmark. We find a striking similarity in the association between response time and fair behavior across groups in the society, which suggests that the predisposition to act fairly is a general human trait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is still an open question when groups perform better than individuals in intellective tasks. We report that in an Acquiring a Company game, what prevailed when there was disagreement among group members was the median proposal and not the best proposal. This aggregation rule explains why groups underperformed with respect to a 'truth wins' benchmark and why they performed better than individuals deciding in isolation in a simple version of the task but worse in the more difficult version. Implications are drawn on when to employ groups rather than individuals in decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce, test, and compare two auction-based methods for eliciting discount rates. In these 'patience auctions', participants bid the smallest future sum they would prefer -or- the longest time they would wait for a reward, rather than receive a smaller, immediate payoff. The most patient bidder receives the delayed reward; all others receive the immediate payoff. These auctions allow us to compare discounting when participants' attention is focused on the temporal versus monetary dimension of delayed rewards. We find that the estimated parameters in the three most commonly used discount functions (exponential, hyperbolic, and quasi-hyperbolic) differ across these two bidding methods (time-bids vs. money-bids). Specifically, our participants tend to show more impatience under time-bids. Furthermore, we find that people are more likely to exhibit exponential (as opposed to hyperbolic) discounting and exhibit less present bias under time-bids, compared to money-bids. To our knowledge, this paper is the first to directly compare time versus money preference elicitations, within the same subjects, using an incentive-compatible mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leadership mechanisms provide a potential means to mitigate social dilemmas, but empirical evidence on the success of such mechanisms is mixed. In this paper, we explore the institutional frame as a relevant factor for the effectiveness of leadership. We compare subjects' behavior in public-goods experiments that are either framed positively (give-some game) or negatively (take-some game). We observe that leader and follower decisions are sensitive to the institutional frame. Leaders contribute less in the take-some game, and the correlation between leaders' and followers' contribution is weaker in the take-some game. Additionally, using a strategy method to elicit followers' reactions at the individual level, we find evidence for the malleability of followers' revealed cooperation types. Taken together, the leadership institution is found to be less efficient in the take- than in the give-frame, both in games that are played only once and repeatedly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the so-called 'self-licensing effect', committing to a virtuous act in a preceding choice may lead to behave less virtuously in the succeeding decision. Consequently, well-intentioned policies can lead to overall counter-productive effects by licensing people to behave badly in related behaviors. On the other side, motivational crowding theory argues that constraining people to adopt a desirable behavior can backfire. We use of a classroom experiment to test whether a regulatory framework to incentivize individuals to adopt pro-environmental behavior generate similar spillovers in terms of licensing effect than a non-regulatory framework. We show that the way the good deed is caused doesn't seem to influence the licensing effect. Nevertheless, we found that business- and environmental-orientated majors react adversely to the regulatory framework. We show that environmental-orientated students exhibit higher intrinsically motivations than business-orientated ones. Accordingly, we suggest that the licensing effect is more likely to arise when the preceding 'virtuous' act is freely chosen (respectively regulatory caused) for non-intrinsically (respectively intrinsically) motivated individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent discussions in decision sciences and economics stress the potential impact of affect on decision outcomes. In this study, we conducted incentive-compatible laboratory experiments ( N = 253) to investigate whether affect causes temporary fluctuations in risk preferences. In particular, we employed film clips to induce participants into joyful, fearful and sad affective states and subsequently elicited risk preferences by asking the participants to make choices among different lotteries. The financial consequences of the lottery choices varied randomly among the fixed-, low-, and high-stakes treatment groups. We find only weak evidence that affective states influence risk preferences. In particular, we find some evidence that sadness leads to risk aversion, but we find no effects for joy and fear. Our findings question recent claims in the literature that the relationship between affect and risk preferences is strong and unambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We test experimentally whether decisions in 2 × 2 games with mixed equilibria depend on the co-player being nature or a human agent. Controlling for social preferences, we find differences in decisions in the chicken game and battle of the sexes but not for stag hunt and matching pennies. We attribute these to subjects' perception of the other's intentionality and disapproval avoidance in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the impact of religious culture on micro financial decisions. Data concerning the religious beliefs of Chinese respondents was collected in 2007. We analyzed the data for the potential influence of religious beliefs on household borrowing decisions. By applying the ordered logit regression methods and IV estimator, we found that respondents with a religious family background borrowed less when other conditions remained unchanged. It was also discovered that, compared with non-believers, Buddhists borrow less than adherents of other religions. No other religious beliefs had a statistically significant influence. That is to say, different religious denominations exert different influences on Chinese household borrowing decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]