0000000000142617
AUTHOR
Nikolaos Georgantzis
The effects of personality, risk and other-regarding attitudes on trust and reciprocity
Abstract This paper reports experimental results on the determinants of trust and reciprocity in the context of a genuinely sequential, binary Trust Game. Apart from behavior in the main experiment, subjects’ risk attitudes and inequality aversion are elicited, as well as the traits of neuroticism and agreeableness, captured through the five-factor model. The findings suggest that trustors’ (first movers) behavior is affected by their loss aversion, while trustees’ (second movers) reciprocal behavior is not explained by any of their other-regarding attitudes, but, rather, by their agreeableness.
El panel de loterías como tarea no paramétrica para la obtención de la actitud frente al riesgo
In this paper, we propose a simple task for eliciting attitudes toward risky choice, the Sabater-Grande and Georgantzís (SGG) lottery-panel task, which consists in a series of lotteries constructed to compensate riskier options with higher risk-return trade-offs. Using Principal Component Analysis technique, we show that the SGG lotterypanel task is capable of capturing two dimensions of individual risky decision making: subjects’ average willingness to choose risky projects and their sensitivity towards variations in the return to risk. We report results from a large dataset obtained from the implementation of the SGG lottery-panel task and discuss regularities and the desirability of its …
Vertical Separation v. Independent Downstream Entry in the Spanish Electricity Network: An Experimental Approach
We present experimental results from a series of sessions organized using the Power Market simulator; a software designed to realistically replicate the Spanish Electricity Market. In the experiments reported here we compare the status quo to two alternative treatments which represent alternative market structures. In one of them, labeled as vertical separation, we assume that power generating firms and electricity distributors-endsuppliers belong to separate business groups. In the second, we study the effect of entry by independent end-suppliers. Both alternative scenarios dominate the status quo in terms of market efficiency, whereas the latter of them dominates the former.
Gender differences in ultimatum games: Despite rather than due to risk attitudes
Abstract We analyze experimental data obtained from an ultimatum game framed as a situation of employee–employer negotiation over salaries. Parallel to this, we elicit subjects’ risk attitudes. In the existing literature, it has often been conjectured that gender differences in strategic environments are partly due to differences in risky decision making. Our evidence suggests that both gender and risk-related effects co-exist in ultimatum bargaining. However, differences in risk attitudes cannot explain gender effects in ultimatum bargaining.
On the evolution of monopoly pricing in Internet-assisted search markets
This study examines the evolution of prices in markets with Internet price-comparison search engines. The empirical study analyzes laboratory data of prices available to informed consumers, for two industry sizes and two conditions on the sample (complete and incomplete). Distributions are typically bimodal. One of the two modes of distribution, corresponding to monopoly pricing, tends to attract such pricing strategies increasingly over time. The second one, corresponding to interior pricing, follows a decreasing trend. Monopoly pricing can serve as a means of insurance against more competitive (but riskier) behavior. In fact, experimental subjects who initially earn low profits due to int…
Competing Against Simulated Equilibrium Price Dispersions: An Experiment on Internet-Assisted Search Markets
In a four-treatment experiment, we test some of the hypotheses in García-Gallego et al. (2004) concerning competition among a number of firms of which some (or all) are indexed by a price-comparison engine facilitating buyers’ search process. In this paper, we isolate individual behavior from noise due to other players’ actions and learning, facing each subject with simulated rivals whose prices are extracted from mixed strategy equilibrium distributions. We find systematic deviations from both theoretical distributions and previous data obtained in sessions where all players were human. Specifically, departures of experimental data from the corresponding theoretical predictions are enhance…
Experimental duopolies under price guarantees
In a symmetric differentiated experimental duopoly we test the ability of Price Guarantees (PGs) to raise prices above the competitive levels. Different types of PGs ("aggressive" and "soft" price-beating and price-matching) are implemented either as an exogenously imposed market rule or as a business strategy. Our results show that PGs may lead close to the collusive outcome, depending on whether the interaction between duopolists is repeated and provided that the guarantee is not of the "aggressive" price-beating type.
Mixture and Distribution of Different Water Qualities: An Experiment on Alternative Scenarios Concerning Vertical Structure in a Complex Market
We set up a model of water management, which is inspired by the possibility of mixing water of different qualities. Water is supplied to two types of consumers with different preferences for water quality and quantity. A distributional knot may exist which optimally distributes the supplied water in the downstream market. Different scenarios compare experimentally the advantages of a centralized versus a decentralized resource management. We conducted experiments with 14 markets in three different settings, labelled as "upstream monopoly", "upstream duopoly" and "duopoly-monopsony". We find that a two-product monopoly performs better than the duopoly regarding social welfare and volatility …