Is a promise as good as an oath? Evidence from hypothetical bias experiments in China
2017/05/26
研討會日期 : 2017-05-26
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Botao Qin
主持人 : Professor Daigee Shaw
地點 : Conference Room B110
演講者簡介 : Professor Qin received his Ph.D. from University of Wyoming in 2014. He is currently an assistant professor of Xi'an Jiaotong University. His research interests include environmental and natural resource economics, behavioral/experimental economics, industrial organization, public economics, and applied microeconomics.
演講摘要 : This paper explores whether a promise is as good as an oath to remove hypothetical bias in preference elicitation. We consider whether a truth-telling promise affects bidding behavior in an induced value experiment and a homegrown value experiment in China with a random nth price auction. We find: 1) Hypothetical bias exists in the Random nth-price auction with Induced Values (IV) and making a truth-telling promise can reduce IV hypothetical bias. 2) All treatments are demand-revealing except for the hypothetical baseline. 3) In the homegrown value experiment, hypothetical bias exists. The promise script, however, did not reduce the hypothetical bias. We then replace the promise script with the solemn oath script and find it does work to reduce the hypothetical bias.
