Can tournaments induce rational play in the centipede game? Exploring dominance vs. strategic uncertainty

We compare behavior in a one-shot Centipede game across several payoff structures including nonlinear payoff tournaments. Assuming Nash to be optimal, results suggest nonlinear tournament payoffs based on overall relative rewards are not sufficient to increase Nash results in the one-shot Centipede style setting. Evidence suggests that reducing strategic uncertainty is more important than increasing dominance in promoting Nash play.Centipede game, payoff tournaments, experiment, strategic uncertainty, dominance

Resolving Differences in Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept: Reply

Gwendolyn C. Morrison (1997) raises a logical point regarding our experimental test of the divergence between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA) measures of economic value (Shogren et al., 1994). She argues that our design does not provide a true test of the existence of a fundamental endowment effect since we did not control for the potential of a pivoting indifference map (Daniel Kahneman et al., 1990). She concludes that even though our ev- idence shows that the mean WTP and WTA bids for market goods with close substitutes (e.g., candy bars and coffee mugs) converge after market experience, the endowment effect might still be alive and well, albeit at statisti- cally insignificant level

VALUING AMBIGUITY: THE CASE OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED GROWTH ENHANCERS

A split-valuation method is developed and implemented to elicit the willingness to pay to consume- or avoid consuming- a product of ambiguous quality. The split-valuation method uses experimental auction markets to separate and value the positive and negative attributes of the ambiguous good. The results show that the method can be used to successfully value a good ambiguous quality. Our application reveals that for a sample of students at a midwestern land-grant institution, the average respondent is willing to pay a premium for meat produced with the use of a genetically engineered growth enhancer that has 30% to 60% fewer calories and is 10% to 20% leaner.Consumer/Household Economics,

EXPERIMENTAL METHODS IN CONSUMER PREFERENCE STUDIES

Controlled experimental auctions can be used to elicit preferences for food products. We describe results from two series of experiments in which subjects revealed their willingness-to-pay for safer food. In one series, the risk reduction technology was not specified; in the other, it was identified as food irradiation. The results provide some evidence on the acceptability of food irradiation as a risk reduction technology.Consumer/Household Economics,

Integrating Economic and Environmental Process Models: An Application of CEEPES to Atrazine

Atrazine is the most widely used herbicide for corn and sorghum and the most commonly encountered in surface water and groundwater. In addition to water quality problems, atrazine poses hazards through atmospheric transport, food residues, and exposure of applicators and wildlife. If atrazine use is restricted, substitute herbicides will come into wider use, increasing the likelihood of occurrence of their own sets of undesirable side effects and imposing cost or efficacy penalties. This paper describes a configuration of the Comprehensive Environmental Economic Policy Evaluation System (CEEPES) to provide decision support for regulation of atrazine and related corn and sorghum herbicides

Where the Deer and The Antelope Play:Conserving Big Game Migrations As an Endangered Phenomena

In the American West, high-profile big game species including mule deer, antelope, elk, moose, bison and bighorn sheep use large landscapes to migrate between winter and summer habitats to obtain the resources they need to survive. The big game species are a vital part of the West’s ecology, economy, and culture and are valued by local, national, and international stakeholders. Thanks to large parcels of private and public land and a low human population, many parts of the American West still provide some of the best big game habitats in the world. But these vast, intact landscapes are under threat by ongoing habitat loss and disturbances to seasonal and migratory habitats that result in declines in big game population and the disappearance of migrations. Addressing the challenge of conserving big game populations and the endangered phenomena of seasonal migration across large landscapes in the American West will require dynamic, innovative, and flexible legal approaches. Those legal approaches should recognize the biological needs of the species themselves and reflect economic policy analysis of conservation in landscapes with multiple land managers. Considering both integrated biological and economic decision frameworks and incentive-based tools to define and implement legal and policy structures can produce migratory species conservation more efficiently than less integrated approaches. Conservation of big game migrations is now a growing priority and initial conservation efforts are beginning to emerge, including the Department of Interior Secretarial Order 3362 “Improving Habitat Quality in Western Big-Game Winter Range and Migration Corridors” and state policies including the Wyoming Game and Fish Department Ungulate Migration Corridor Strategy. This interdisciplinary paper evaluates those emerging policies and finds that the policies miss opportunities to provide higher levels of conservation of migratory species by failing to address key ecological characteristics of migratory species and to incorporate economically efficient hierarchies of management and policy. We conclude by offering thoughts on how future conservation polices might be designed to incorporate both ecology and economics to better conserve migrations

Lying and Shirking Under Oath

This study explores whether an oath to honesty can reduce both shirking and lying among crowd-sourced internet workers. Using a classic coin-flip experiment, we first show that a substantial majority of Mechanical Turk workers both shirk and lie when reporting the number of heads flipped. We then demonstrate lying can be reduced by first asking each worker to swear voluntarily on his or her honor to tell the truth in subsequent economic decisions. The oath, however, did not reduce shirking as measured by time- at-coin-flip-task, although it did increase the time they spent answering a demographic survey. Conditional on response, MTurk shirkers and liars were less likely to agree to an ex post honesty oath. Our results suggest oaths may help elicit more truthful behavior in on-line crowd-sourced environments

CEEPES: An Overview of the Comprehensive Economic Environmental Policy Evaluation System

The Comprehensive Economic Pesticide Policy Evaluation System (CEPPES), as CEEPES was originally called, was developed in 1986 under a cooperative agreement between the Office of Policy Analysis of the Environmental Protection Agency (OPA/EPA) and the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University (CARD/ISU). CEPPES was designed to analyze agricultural and environmental policies. It was structured to accommodate the important interrelationships among environmental and agricultural policies in the United States. Integrated policy analysis can discern and demonstrate efficient strategies to attain targeted levels for the agricultural sector, human health, and environmental performance

Matching Grants and Public Goods: A Closed-Ended Contingent Valuation Experiment

Matching grants are commonly used to influence the bundle of public goods provided by governments. We design a contingent valuation experiment to determine the value individuals place on improved recreational facilities under a matching grant proposal. The experiment provides an opportunity to examine preferences given the public good exists in an active and well-defined market, and the valuation experiment is perceived as meaningful to public policy. We estimate a mean willingness-to-pay for park improvements of $8.30, far less than the implied tax increase of$21 provided by local politicians opposed to the project, but nearly doubled the actual tax increase for the average property owner