IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/expeco/v4y2001i3p257-269.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Endowment Effect and Repeated Market Trials: Is the Vickrey Auction Demand Revealing?

Author

Listed:
  • Jack Knetsch
  • Fang-Fang Tang
  • Richard Thaler

Abstract

The difference between people's valuations of gains and losses has been widely observed in both single trial and repeated trial experiments, as well as in survey responses and in commonplace behavior. However, the results of some Vickrey auction experiments indicate that the disparity may decrease, or even disappear, over repeated trials. This paper reports the results of two further repeated Vickrey auction experiments that test the impact of both a second price and a ninth price auction rule on valuations. Although valuations should be independent of this variation in the exchange price rule, the manipulation had a dramatic impact on subjects' stated values of a common market good. The results suggest that the endowment effect remains robust over repeated trials, and that contrary to common understanding, the Vickrey auction may elicit differing demands dependent on the context of the valuation. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001

Suggested Citation

  • Jack Knetsch & Fang-Fang Tang & Richard Thaler, 2001. "The Endowment Effect and Repeated Market Trials: Is the Vickrey Auction Demand Revealing?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 4(3), pages 257-269, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:expeco:v:4:y:2001:i:3:p:257-269
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1013221421382
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1013221421382
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/A:1013221421382?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harless, David W., 1989. "More laboratory evidence on the disparity between willingness to pay and compensation demanded," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 359-379, May.
    2. Jack L. Knetsch & J. A. Sinden, 1984. "Willingness to Pay and Compensation Demanded: Experimental Evidence of an Unexpected Disparity in Measures of Value," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(3), pages 507-521.
    3. Tversky, Amos & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Anomalies: Preference Reversals," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 201-211, Spring.
    4. Shogren, Jason F. & Seung Y. Shin & Dermot J. Hayes & James B. Kliebenstein, 1994. "Resolving Differences in Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 255-270, March.
    5. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1325-1348, December.
    6. Vernon L. Smith, 1980. "Relevance of Laboratory Experiments to Testing Resource Allocation Theory," NBER Chapters, in: Evaluation of Econometric Models, pages 345-377, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Shogren, Jason F & Hayes, Dermot J, 1997. "Resolving Differences in Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 241-244, March.
    8. Boyce, Rebecca R, et al, 1992. "An Experimental Examination of Intrinsic Values as a," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(5), pages 1366-1373, December.
    9. Kachelmeier, Steven J & Shehata, Mohamed, 1992. "Examining Risk Preferences under High Monetary Incentives: Experimental Evidence from the People's Republic of China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(5), pages 1120-1141, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Horowitz, John K. & McConnell, Kenneth E., 2002. "A Review of WTA/WTP Studies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 426-447, November.
    2. Sayman, Serdar & Onculer, Ayse, 2005. "Effects of study design characteristics on the WTA-WTP disparity: A meta analytical framework," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 289-312, April.
    3. Brown, Thomas C. & Gregory, Robin, 1999. "Why the WTA-WTP disparity matters," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 323-335, March.
    4. William S. Neilson & Michael McKee & Robert P. Berrens, 2013. "Value and outcome uncertainty as explanations for the WTA vs WTP disparity," Chapters, in: John A. List & Michael K. Price (ed.), Handbook on Experimental Economics and the Environment, chapter 6, pages 171-189, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Roth, Gerrit, 2006. "Predicting the Gap between Willingness to Accept and Willingness to Pay," Munich Dissertations in Economics 4901, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    6. Andrea Isoni, 2011. "The willingness-to-accept/willingness-to-pay disparity in repeated markets: loss aversion or ‘bad-deal’ aversion?," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 71(3), pages 409-430, September.
    7. Eisenberger, Roselies & Weber, Martin, 1993. "Willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept for state contingent claims," Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel 309, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.
    8. Charles R. Plott & Kathryn Zeiler, 2005. "The Willingness to Pay–Willingness to Accept Gap, the "Endowment Effect," Subject Misconceptions, and Experimental Procedures for Eliciting Valuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 530-545, June.
    9. Borges, Bernhard F. J. & Knetsch, Jack L., 1998. "Tests of market outcomes with asymmetric valuations of gains and losses: Smaller gains, fewer trades, and less value," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 185-193, January.
    10. Shogren, Jason F., 2006. "Experimental Methods and Valuation," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 19, pages 969-1027, Elsevier.
    11. Ulrich Schmidt & Stefan Traub, 2009. "An Experimental Investigation of the Disparity Between WTA and WTP for Lotteries," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 66(3), pages 229-262, March.
    12. Oben K Bayrak & Bengt Kriström, 2016. "Is there a valuation gap? The case of interval valuations," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(1), pages 218-236.
    13. Shogren, Jason F. & Cho, Sungwon & Koo, Cannon & List, John & Park, Changwon & Polo, Pablo & Wilhelmi, Robert, 2001. "Auction mechanisms and the measurement of WTP and WTA," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 97-109, April.
    14. Morrison, Gwendolyn C., 2000. "WTP and WTA in repeated trial experiments: Learning or leading?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 57-72, February.
    15. María del Pilar García Pachón, 2016. "Instrumentos Económicos Y Financieros Para La Gestión Ambiental," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Derecho, number 853, July.
    16. Amoah, Anthony & Ferrini, Silvia & Schaafsma, Marije, 2019. "Electricity outages in Ghana: Are contingent valuation estimates valid?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    17. John C. Bernard & William Schulze, 2005. "The next new thing: curiosity and the motivation to purchase novel products," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(32), pages 1-8.
    18. Horowitz, John K. & McConnell, Kenneth E., 1999. "A Review of WTA/WTP Studies," Working Papers 197848, University of Maryland, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    19. Morrison, Gwendolyn C., 1998. "Understanding the disparity between WTP and WTA: endowment effect, substitutability, or imprecise preferences?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 189-194, May.
    20. Edward J. Lopez & W. Robert Nelson, 2005. "The Endowment Effect in a Public Good Experiment," Experimental 0512001, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:expeco:v:4:y:2001:i:3:p:257-269. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.