Talk:Experimental economics
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- Behavioural biases in auctions
- Other experiments went further into the auction experiments with which Smith had begun the discipline. He showed that a naive crowd tends to pay more for any item when it sold via an (increasing price) English auction, rather than a (declining price) Dutch auction.
- One explanation of this bias is that a declining price generates a sense of "suspense", whereas an increasing price tends to give the ultimate victor in a bidding war an extra sense of satisfaction. Therefore, the social pressure not to lose may add an extra utility to winning beyond that of the item purchased. Another explanation is the idea in a common value auction that seeing other people bid for the same thing increases its probable value. (See: Classroom experiment example of Dutch auction under-valuation.)
- Yet another explanation is that the optimal bidding rule is more transparent in an English Auction than in a Dutch Auction. In an English Auction (for a single unit of a good) the optimal bidding strategy is to continue raising one's bid until doing so would result in a price that exceeded one's value for the unit. (Given infinitely small bidding increments this results in a unit price equal to the second highest value among the bidders.) In a Dutch Auction the optimal bidding strategy is to allow the bid price to fall to a precise fraction of one's value. The fraction is (N-1)/N, where N is the number of bidders in the auction. Naive bidders (and even many experienced bidders) are unlikely to know this bidding strategy, and may therefore allow the price to fall "too low" before purchasing.
I'm not sure this belongs here. I might be alright with restoring it, or moving it to Dutch auction, minus the "naive" comments. But the argument doesn't seem quite right. Suppose you and I are bidding on something we both value at $100. Therefore, according to the above (N=2), you wait for $50. But I accept at $75. How was your strategy optimal? Certainly it's not an equilibrium strategy. 192.75.48.150 17:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I think (N-1)/N applies when valuations are independently and identically distributed across bidders and are draws from a uniform distribution from 0 to some upper value.
I believe that the "social preferences" section should include a note about prospect theory as a certain degree of the experimental findings in this field are regarding welfare changes in respect to others Canking (talk) 17:55, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
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[edit] Article desperately needs explanation/links for "Pareto"
I have heard of the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule), but the other things in this article which have Pareto's name attached to them are obviously meant to refer to much more specific ideas and procedures. What do they mean? --Jonrock (talk) 18:39, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
- Linked to Pareto efficiency Cretog8 (talk) 04:22, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Strange Wilson video
Up at the top, as a reference to "which emerged in the 1990's" (very arguable, but beside the point at the moment), there's a link to the video [1]. While I've only watched about a minute of the video, it seems to be a philosophy / enlightenment / theology talk. If it leads to a point on experimental economics, I still think it's too tangential to be right up top.Cretog8 (talk) 22:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Emerged in 1990's?
Experimental economics long predates the 90's, although I suppose that's when it exploded. Need to figure out a better way to handle this, perhaps a brief history. Cretog8 (talk) 04:06, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Experimental topics
This section looks too deep and narrow. Trying to cram in a lot of the content of learning experiments, for example, when that's just one area. Not sure how it should be organized, but should probably aim for broader and shallower? Cretog8 (talk) 04:19, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Debates within field
- Deception: Some argument about whether deception is really all that bad. In any case, the problem with deception is not so much a matter of the experiment in which it is used. It's more a matter of "polluting the well"; subjects who have been deceived in one experiment are likely to be subjects in future experiments and distrust the instructions, which kills salience.
- Neutral context: The standard has become providing context-free instructions (referring to a product as "A", rather than as "fish", for instance). It's been argued that providing a context can be beneficial, that the salience lost to framing effects is often much smaller than that gained by better understanding.
- Field experiments: This needs a section of its own. In any case, argument about how much applicability of results gets lost when moved into lab.
Cretog8 (talk) 13:10, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Link to Neuroeconomics
Neuroeconomics is its own discipline, but tied tightly to experimental economics. Cretog8 (talk) 13:53, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
