A menu of paired lottery choices is structured so that the crossover point to the high-risk lottery can be used to infer the degree of risk aversion. With normal laboratory payoffs of several dollars, most subjects are risk averse and few are risk loving. Scaling up all payoffs by factors of...

We propose and test a new method for eliciting curvature-controlled discount rates that are invariant to the form of the utility function. The advantage of this method is that individual discount rates can be obtained without knowledge of risk attitude or parametric assumptions about the form of...

This paper tests whether the use of endogenous risk categorization by insurers enables consumers to make better-informed decisions even if they do not choose to purchase insurance. We do so by adding a simple insurance market to an experimental test of optimal (Bayesian) updating. In some...

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in policy applications of different auction systems. This paper reports on a series of experiments that were used to design and implement an auction in a unique policy-making environment. In April, 2000, the Georgia legislature passed a unique...

This paper reports a new experimental test of prospect theory's reflection effect. We conduct a sequence of experiments that allow us to directly compare choices under reflected gains and losses where real and hypothetical payoffs range from several dollars to over $100. Lotteries with positive...

It has become increasingly common in economics experiments to elicit a series of choices from participants, and then pay for only one, selected at random, after all have been made. This allows the researcher to observe a large number of individual decisions, and to increase payoffs for each...