Syllabus

Blázquez de Paz, Mario, and Chloé Le Coq. Beyond Hawks and Doves: can inequality ease coordination?. No. 17867. CEPR Discussion Papers, 2023. [revised version here]

Smith, V. L., Economics in the Laboratory
The Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, 1994, 8, pp. 113-131

Friedman, D. & Cassar, A., Economics Lab: An Introduction to Experimental Economics
Routledge, 2004. Chapter 2.

Roth, Alvin E. “Introduction to Experimental Economics.” In The Handbook of Experimental Economics, 107. Princeton University Press, 2020. https://www.wiwi-experimente.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/fg210/handbook_3_109.pdf 

Binmore, K., Why Experiment in Economics?
The Economic Journal, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1999, 109, 16-24

We will run a mock experiment, on line. Students will be required to sign-up on Orsee, they will receive an invitation for the experiment, and will have to go through all the steps of a real experimental session. Right after the session, we'll analyze the data “on the spot”, and discuss all the relevant steps of an experimental session.

Quick focus on:

• Recruitment

• Instructions

• Control questions

• Questionnaires

• Payment/incentives

• Data analysis

Friedman, D. & Cassar, A., Economics Lab: An Introduction to Experimental Economics

Routledge, 2004. Chapter 6.

• Treatment and control variables

• Between/within subjects design

• Order effect

• Across games consistency

• Strategy method

Exley, C. L., & Kessler, J. B. (forthcoming). Motivated Errors. American Economic Review. http://www.nber.org/papers/w26595.pdf 

presented by Federico Viarengo

Blanco, M.; Engelmann, D. & Normann, H. T., A within-subject analysis of other-regarding preferences. Games and Economic Behavior, 2011, 72, 321 - 338

Casari, M; Cason T. The Strategy Method Lowers Measured Trustworthy Behavior, Economics Letters, 2009, 103, 3, 157-159

Charness, G., Gneezy, U., & Kuhn, M. A. (2012). Experimental methods: Between-subject and within-subject design. Journal of economic behavior & organization, 81(1), 1-8.

Friedman, D. & Cassar, A., Economics Lab: An Introduction to Experimental Economics

Routledge, 2004. Chapter 4.

Harrison, G. W.; Johnson, E.; McInnes, M. M. & Rutström, E. E. Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects: Comment. The American Economic Review, American Economic Association, 2005, 95, pp. 897-901

Holt, Charles A., and Susan K. Laury. Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects 

American Economic Review, 2002, 92(5), 1644-1655.

Poncela-Casasnovas, J., Gutiérrez-Roig, M., Gracia-Lázaro, C., Vicens, J., Gómez-Gardeñes, J., Perelló, J., ... & Sánchez, A. Humans display a reduced set of consistent behavioral phenotypes in dyadic games. Science advances, 2016, 2(8), e1600451.

Englmaier, F., Grimm, S., Grothe, D., Schindler, D., & Schudy, S. (2024). The Effect of Incentives in Non-Routine Analytical Team Tasks. Journal of Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1086/729443

presented by Damiano Paoli

Almås, I., Cappelen, A. W., & Tungodden, B. Cutthroat capitalism versus cuddly socialism: Are Americans more meritocratic and efficiency-seeking than Scandinavians?. Journal of Political Economy, 2020, 128(5), 1753-1788.

Cohn A., Maréchal M.A., Noll T. Bad boys: How criminal identity salience affects rule violation. The Review of Economic Studies. 2015 Oct 1;82(4):1289-308.

Cohn, Maréchal, Tannenbaum & Zuend. Civic honesty around the globe, Science, 2019, 365.

Harrison, G. W. & List, J. A., Field Experiments, Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, 2004, 42, 1009-1055

Henrich, J.; Boyd, R.; Bowles, S.; Camerer, C.; Fehr, E.; Gintis, H.; McElreath, R.; Alvard, M.; Barr, A.; Ensminger, J.; Henrich, N. S.; Hill, K.; Gil-White, F.; Gurven, M.; Marlowe, F. W.; Patton, J. Q. & Tracer, D. “Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2005, 28, 795-815

Herrmann, B., C. Thoeni, and S. Gachter. Antisocial Punishment across Societies. Science, 2008, 319(5868), 1362.

Reuben E., Li S.X., Suetens S., Svorenčík A., Turocy T., Kotsidis V. Trends in the publication of experimental economics articles. Journal of the Economic Science Association. 2022 Dec;8(1-2):1-5.

Snowberg, E., & Yariv, L. Testing the waters: Behavior across participant pools. American Economic Review 2021, 111(2), 687-719.

Haaland, I., Roth, C., & Wohlfart, J. (2023). Designing Information Provision Experiments. Journal of Economic Literature, 61(1), 3–40. 

presented by Elisa Mahfouz

Framing effects:

Alekseev, A., Charness, G., & Gneezy, U. Experimental methods: When and why contextual instructions are important. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2017, 134, 48–59.

Andreoni, J., Warm-Glow Versus Cold-Prickle: The Effects of Positive and Negative Framing on Cooperation in Experiments

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The MIT Press, 1995, 110, 1-21  

Deception:

Bardsley, N., Control without deception: Individual behaviour in free-riding experiments revisited." Experimental Economics, 2000, 3, no. 3, 215-240.

Charness, G., Samek, A., & van de Ven, J. What is considered deception in experimental economics?. Experimental Economics, 2021, 1-28.

Hertwig, R. & Ortmann, A., Experimental practices in economics: A methodological challenge for psychologists?

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Cambridge University Press, 2001, 24, 383-403 

Priming:

Bhalotra S, Clots-Figueras I, Iyer L, Vecci J. Leader identity and coordination. 

Review of Economics and Statistics. 2023, 105(1): 175–189.

Chen, Y. & Li, S. X., Group Identity and Social Preferences

The American Economic Review, American Economic Association, 2009, 99, pp. 431-457

Writing instructions:

Bigoni, M. & Dragone, D., Effective and efficient experimental instructions

Economics Letters, 2012, 117, 460- 463 

• Induced value theory

• Crowding out of intrinsic motivations

• Cognitive abilities, incentives, and preferences

Enke, Benjamin, Uri Gneezy, Brian Hall, David Martin, Vadim Nelidov, Theo Offerman, and Jeroen van de Ven. “Cognitive Biases: Mistakes or Missing Stakes?” The Review of Economics and Statistics 105, no. 4 (July 11, 2023): 818–32.

presented by Monica Magrone

Andersson, O., Holm, H. J., Tyran, J.-R. and Wengström, E, Risk Aversion Relates To Cognitive Ability: Preferences Or Noise? Journal of the European Economic Association, 2016, 14: 1129–1154.

Andreoni, J., Kuhn, M.A., Sprenger, C. Measuring time preferences: A comparison of experimental methods. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2015, 116, 451–464.

Azrieli, Yaron, Christopher P. Chambers, and Paul J. Healy. "Incentives in experiments: A theoretical analysis." Journal of Political Economy 126, no. 4, 2018, pp. 1472-1503.

DellaVigna, S., & Pope, D. What motivates effort? Evidence and expert forecasts. The Review of Economic Studies, 2018, 85(2), 1029-1069.

Friedman, D. & Cassar, A., Economics Lab: An Introduction to Experimental Economics

Routledge, 2004. Chapter 3.

Kube S., Maréchal M.A., Puppe C. The currency of reciprocity: Gift exchange in the workplace. American Economic Review. 2012 Jun 1;102(4):1644-62.

Plott C.R., Zeiler K. The willingness to pay–willingness to accept gap, the “endowment effect,” subject misconceptions, and experimental procedures for eliciting valuations. American Economic Review. 2005 Jun 1;95(3):530-45.

Smith, V. L., Experimental Economics: Induced Value Theory

The American Economic Review, American Economic Association, 1976, 66, pp. 274-279

Romero, Julian, and Yaroslav Rosokha. “Mixed Strategies in the Indefinitely Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma.” Econometrica 91, no. 6 (2023): 2295–2331. 

Camera, G. & Casari, M., Cooperation among Strangers under the Shadow of the Future, The American Economic Review, 2009, 99, pp. 979-1005

Dal Bó, P. D., & Fréchette, G. R., The evolution of cooperation in infinitely repeated games: Experimental evidence. The American Economic Review, 2011, 101(1), 411-429.

Dal Bó, P., Cooperation under the Shadow of the Future: Experimental Evidence from Infinitely Repeated Games. The American Economic Review, 2005, 95, 1591-1604

Dal Bó, P., & Frechette, G. R. On the Determinants of Cooperation in Infinitely Repeated Games: A Survey. Journal of Economic Literature. 2018.

Embrey, M., Fréchette, G. R., & Yuksel, S. Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2018, 133(1), 509–551. 

Fréchette, G. R., & Yuksel, S. Infinitely Repeated Games in the Laboratory: Four Perspectives on Discounting and Random Termination. Experimental Economics, 2017, 20 (2), pp. 279-308.

Friedman, D., Oprea, R.. A Continuous Dilemma. The American Economic Review, 2012, 102, 337–63.

Mao, A., Dworkin, L., Suri, S., & Watts, D. J. Resilient cooperators stabilize long-run cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma. Nature communications, 2017, 8(1), 13800.

Mengel, F., Orlandi, L., & Weidenholzer, S. Match length realization and cooperation in indefinitely repeated games. Journal of Economic Theory, 2022.

Bursztyn, L., Egorov, G., & Fiorin, S. (2020). From Extreme to Mainstream: The Erosion of Social Norms. American Economic Review, 110(11), 3522–3548. 

presented by Ozlem Yasar

Barmettler, F.; Fehr, E. & Zehnder, C. Big experimenter is watching you! Anonymity and prosocial behavior in the laboratory. Games and Economic Behavior, 2012, 75, 17 - 34

Bénabou, R. The economics of motivated beliefs. Revue d'économie politique 125, no. 5, 2015: 665-685.

Blanco, M.; Engelmann, D.; Koch, A. & Normann, H.-T. Belief elicitation in experiments: is there a hedging problem? Experimental Economics, Springer Netherlands, 2010, 13, 412-438

Charness, G. & Gneezy, U. What's in a name? Anonymity and social distance in dictator and ultimatum games. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2008, 68, 29 - 35

Charness G., Gneezy U., Rasocha V. Experimental methods: Eliciting beliefs. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. 2021 Sep 1;189:234-56.

Cherry, T. L.; Frykblom, P. & Shogren, J. F. Hardnose the Dictator, The American Economic Review, 2002, 92, 1218-1221

De Quidt, J., Haushofer, J., & Roth, C. Measuring and bounding experimenter demand. American Economic Review, 2018, 108(11), 3266-3302.

Eckel, C. C. & Grossman, P. J. Altruism in Anonymous Dictator Games. Games and Economic Behavior, 1996, 16, 181 - 191

Holt, C.A. and Smith, A.M. Belief elicitation with a synchronized lottery choice menu that is invariant to risk attitudes. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2016, 8(1), pp.110-3

Krupka, E. L., & Weber, R. A. Identifying Social Norms Using Coordination Games: Why Does Dictator Game Sharing Vary? Journal of the European Economic Association, 2013, 11(3), 495–524.

Oprea, R., Yuksel, S. Social Exchange of Motivated Beliefs. Journal of the European Economic Association, 2021.

Palfrey, Thomas R. & Wang, Stephanie W. On eliciting beliefs in strategic games. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, 2009, 71(2), 98-109.

Zimmermann, F. The dynamics of motivated beliefs. American Economic Review, 2020, 110(2), 337-61.

Arechar, A.A., Gächter, S., Molleman, L. Conducting interactive experiments online. Experimental Economics, 2018, 21, 99–131.

Buchan, N. R., Grimalda, G., Wilson, R., Brewer, M., Fatas, E., & Foddy, M. Globalization and human cooperation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(11), 4138-4142, 2009.

Buso IM, Di Cagno D, De Caprariis S, Ferrari L, Larocca V, Lorè L, Marazzi F, Panaccione L, Spadoni L. Lab-like Findings from Online Experiments. Journal of the Economic Science Association, 7(2), 184-193, 2021.

Chapman, J., Dean, M., Ortoleva, P., Snowberg, E. and Camerer, C., 2023. Econographics. Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics.

Dhami, S. The Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis. Chapter 23. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Falk, A., Becker, A., Dohmen, T., Huffman, D.B., Sunde, U., The Preference Survey Module: A Validated Instrument for Measuring Risk, Time, and Social Preferences. Management Science, 2023.

Falk, A., Becker, A., Dohmen, T., Enke, B., Sunde, U., & Huffman, D. Global Evidence on Economic Preferences. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2018.

Fetzer T, Hensel L, Hermle J, Roth C. Coronavirus perceptions and economic anxiety. Review of Economics and Statistics. 2020 Jun 19:1-36.

Linnér RK, Biroli P, Kong E, Meddens SF, Wedow R, Fontana MA, Lebreton M, Tino SP, Abdellaoui A, Hammerschlag AR, Nivard MG. Genome-wide association analyses of risk tolerance and risky behaviors in over 1 million individuals identify hundreds of loci and shared genetic influences. Nature genetics. 2019 Feb;51(2):245-57.

Sunde, U., Dohmen, T., Enke, B., Falk, A., Huffman, D., & Meyerheim, G. Patience and Comparative Development. Review of Economic Studies, 2022.

Stantcheva S. How to run surveys: A guide to creating your own identifying variation and revealing the invisible. National Bureau of Economic Research; 2022 Oct 3.

• Power analysis: How many subjects/sessions per treatment?

• Dependency issues

• Pre-analysis plans

Huber, C., Dreber, A., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., Kirchler, M., Weitzel, U., Abellán, M., Adayeva, X., Ay, F. C., Barron, K., Berry, Z., Bönte, W., Brütt, K., Bulutay, M., Campos-Mercade, P., Cardella, E., Claassen, M. A., Cornelissen, G., Dawson, I. G. J., … Holzmeister, F. (2023). Competition and moral behavior: A meta-analysis of forty-five crowd-sourced experimental designs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(23), e2215572120.

G*Power: https://www.psychologie.hhu.de/arbeitsgruppen/allgemeine-psychologie-und-arbeitspsychologie/gpower 

Askarov Z., Doucouliagos A., Doucouliagos H., Stanley T.D. The Significance of Data-Sharing Policy. Journal of the European Economic Association. 2022 Sep 20.

Bellemare, C., Bissonnette, L., & Kröger, S. Simulating power of economic experiments: the powerBBK package. Journal of the Economic Science Association, 2016, 2(2), 157-168.

Camerer, C.F., Dreber, A., Forsell, E., Ho, T.H., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., Kirchler, M., Almenberg, J., Altmejd, A., Chan, T. and Heikensten, E. Evaluating replicability of laboratory experiments in economics. Science, 2016, 351(6280), pp.1433-1436.

Christensen, G., and Edward M. "Transparency, reproducibility, and the credibility of economics research." Journal of Economic Literature 56, no. 3, 2018, pp: 920-80. 

Ding, W. Laboratory experiments can pre-design to address power and selection issues. Journal of the Economic Science Association, 2020.

Friedman, D. & Cassar, A., Economics Lab: An Introduction to Experimental Economics. Routledge, 2004. Chapter 5.

Kvarven A, Strømland E, Johannesson M. Comparing meta-analyses and preregistered multiple-laboratory replication projects. Nature Human Behaviour. 2020 Apr;4(4):423-34.

List, J. A., Sadoff, S., & Wagner, M. So you want to run an experiment, now what? Some Simple Rules of Thumb for Optimal Experimental Design. Experimental Economics, 2011, 14(4), 439-457.

Olken, B. A. Promises and Perils of Pre-analysis Plans. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2015, 29(3), 61–80. 

Page, L., Noussair, C.N. & Slonim, R. The replication crisis, the rise of new research practices and what it means for experimental economics. Journal of the Economic Science Association 7, 210–225, 2021.

Siegel, S. & Castellan, N. Nonparametric statistics for the behavioral sciences. McGraw-Hill, 1988

Schlag, K. Exact Hypothesis Testing without Assumptions - New and Old Results not only for Experimental Game Theory. Mimeo, 2011. WEB: http://homepage.univie.ac.at/karl.schlag/research/statistics/exacthypothesistesting.pdf