This paper presents an experimental study of the random incentive mechanisms which are a standard procedure in economic and psychological experiments. Random incentive mechanisms have several advantages but are incentive-compatible only if responses to the single tasks are independent. This is...

Most experiments on decision theory ask individual subjects to make more than one decision. The isolation hypothesis is commonly used to justify the choice of the random lottery incentive mechanism as the preferred payoff protocol. This research note reports on the main findings on the...

The St. Petersburg paradox is one of the oldest challenges of expected value theory. Thus far, explanations of the paradox aim at small probabilities being perceived as zero and the boundedness of utility of the outcome. This paper provides experimental results showing that neither diminishing...

Experiments on choice under risk typically involve multiple decisions by individual subjects. The choice of mechanism for selecting decision(s) for payoff is an essential design feature that is often driven by appeal to the isolation hypothesis or the independence axiom. We report two...

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A growing literature reports the conclusions that: (a) expected utility theory does not provide a plausible theory of risk aversion for both small-stakes and large-stakes gambles; and (b) this decision theory should be replaced with an alternative theory characterized by loss aversion. This...

Weber, Shafir, and Blais (2004) advocate use of the coefficient of variation (CV) as a measure of risk sensitivity and apply CV in a meta-analysis of data for risky choices by humans and animals. We critically re-examine the CV measure as either a normative or descriptive criterion for decision...

This paper addresses four "stylized facts" that summarize data from experimental studies of voluntary contributions to provision of public goods. Theoretical propositions and testable hypotheses for voluntary contributions are derived from two models of social preferences, the inequity aversion...