Debt aversion experiment: A replication with sophisticated participants

We conduct a replication experiment, with sophisticated student participants, of the three main treatments of the debt aversion experiment by Martínez-Marquina and Shi (2024). While participants in our experiment have chosen return maximizing strategies much more frequently than those in Martínez-Marquina and Shi (2024), our findings partially corroborate their observations that participants burdened with debt tend to forego, at least initially, the "certain and maximum profit investment opportunity" in favor of prioritizing debt repayment.