The WTA-WTP disparity and exchange asymmetries
The willingness to accept/willingness to pay disparity and exchange asymmetries are two (related) observed behaviors that are in conflict with long-established micro-economic theory. Both behaviors have garnered much attention in recent years, as the established theory has been challenged (including by two recent winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics) and the meaning of such behavioral anomalies has been pondered. I have been fascinated by these anomalies since the 1980s and am lucky to have been able to examine them. Here are some of the results:
Brown, Thomas C., Mark Morrison, Jake Benfield, Gretchen Nurse Rainbolt, and Paul A. Bell. 2015. Exchange asymmetry in experimental settings. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 120:104-116.
Kingsley, David, C., and Thomas C. Brown. 2013. Value learning and the willingness to accept – willingness to pay disparity. Economic Letters 120(3):473-476.
Kingsley, David C. and Thomas C. Brown. 2012. Does prompting for revision influence subjects' offers in willingness to accept -- willingness to pay lab experiments? Economics Bulletin. 32(3):2580–2585.
Brown, Thomas C. 2003. Loss aversion without the endowment effect, and other explanations for the WTA-WTP disparity. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 57(2005):367-379.
Brown, Thomas C., and Robin Gregory. 1999. Why the WTA--WTP disparity matters. Ecological Economics 28:323-335.
Gregory, Robin, Thomas C. Brown, and Jack L. Knetsch. 1996. Valuing Risks to the Environment. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 545(May):54-63.
Boyce, RR, TC Brown, GD McClelland, GL Peterson, and WD Schulze. 1992. An experimental examination of intrinsic environmental values as a source of the WTA-WTP disparity. American Economic Review 82(5): 1366-1373.