Two behavioral concepts, loss aversion and mental accounting, have been combined to provide a theoretical explanation of the equity premium puzzle. Recent experimental evidence supports the theory, as students-behavior has been found to be consistent with myopic loss aversion (MLA). Yet, much...

Play in the traditional trust experiment depends both on trust beliefs and on levels of risk aversion. We ran two experiments with a diverse set of subjects in fifteen villages of rural Paraguay, the traditional trust experiment and a new experiment measuring only risk aversion. We find that...

We conduct experiments in urban slums to measure trust and cooperation and to see how behavior varies with demographic factors and associational measures of social capital. Overall, we find high contribution rates among Thai and Vietnamese participants in a voluntary contribution game, and we...

This paper develops a finite mixture distribution analysis of Beauty- Contest data obtained from diverse groups of experiments. ML estimation using the EM approach provides estimates for the means and variances of the component distributions, which are common to all the groups, and estimates of...

Time-consuming and costly religious rituals pose a puzzle for economists committed to rational choice theories of human behavior. We propose that religious rituals promote in-group trust and cooperation that help to overcome collective-action problems. To test this hypothesis we design field...

Despite increased use of experimental auctions, a myriad of different procedures are being employed without formal consideration of how the procedures might affect results. The study investigates the effect of several procedural issues on valuation estimates from experimental auctions. Results...

Many forest ecosystems provide multiple goods and services to both local users (e.g. firewood, water) and to other external beneficiaries (biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration). This calls for alternative approaches in the governance of these local ecosystems. Even if local users...

This study compares hypothetical and nonhypothetical responses to choice experiment questions. We test for hypothetical bias in a choice experiment involving beef ribeye steaks with differing quality attributes. In general, hypothetical responses predicted higher probabilities of purchasing beef...

After a merger, company officials face the challenge of making compensation schemes uniform and of redesigning teams with managers from companies with different incentives, work habits, and recruiting methods. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between executive pay and performance...