Play it again! A Natural Experiment on Reversibility Bias

Behavioral biases affect a large number of human decisions, many of which have relevant welfare effects. We identify a bias that we denote as "reversibility bias" and explore how the introduction of explicit exposure mechanisms can contribute to attenuate it. To do this, we exploit a unique natural experiment - the introduction of a decision review system represented by player challenges and the associated Hawk-Eye technology in professional tennis. This experiment allows us to identify the bias, by illustrating that if such a bias exists, the challenge rule should reduce the number of calls that postpone the assignment of a point. Our findings may have significant policy implications providing a conceptual framework for the design of institutions to alleviate the welfare costs associated with reversibility bias in different contexts, such as court rulings, human resource management and debt roll-over decisions.