Price Expectations and Reference-dependent Preferences

Price Expectations and Reference-dependent Preferences PDF Author: Robert Rutledge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
We experimentally test Kőszegi and Rabin's (2006, 2007) theory of reference-dependent preferences in the context of price expectations. In an incentivised valuation task, participants are endowed with a mug and provide their willingness to accept (WTA) to sell it. We manipulate the sale price in a separate, exogenous forced sale scenario, which is predicted to produce a 'comparison effect', moving WTA in the opposite direction to the forced sale price. Consistent with the theory, we observe a treatment effect of between AUD $0.79 and $2.06 in the hypothesised direction; however, it is statistically insignificant. We also elicit participants' loss aversion to account for heterogeneity in the theorised effect; however, controlling for the interaction between our treatment and loss aversion does not consistently strengthen our result.

Price Expectations and Reference-dependent Preferences

Price Expectations and Reference-dependent Preferences PDF Author: Robert Rutledge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
We experimentally test Kőszegi and Rabin's (2006, 2007) theory of reference-dependent preferences in the context of price expectations. In an incentivised valuation task, participants are endowed with a mug and provide their willingness to accept (WTA) to sell it. We manipulate the sale price in a separate, exogenous forced sale scenario, which is predicted to produce a 'comparison effect', moving WTA in the opposite direction to the forced sale price. Consistent with the theory, we observe a treatment effect of between AUD $0.79 and $2.06 in the hypothesised direction; however, it is statistically insignificant. We also elicit participants' loss aversion to account for heterogeneity in the theorised effect; however, controlling for the interaction between our treatment and loss aversion does not consistently strengthen our result.

Expectations-Based Reference-Dependent Preferences

Expectations-Based Reference-Dependent Preferences PDF Author: Guofang Huang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 59

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Book Description
This paper empirically tests the expectations-based reference-dependent preference theory, by using a unique panel data-set on the non-negotiable daily list prices for used cars advertised by a large national dealership. It identifies a major point in car buyers' price expectation for a used car as the car's list price on the previous day. The paper finds that-- controlling for a car's actual price, its detailed attributes, the competitive environment and a rich set of fixed effects --a positive (negative) deviation of the car's actual from the previous day's list price lowers (increases) its daily sale probability significantly more than what can be accounted for by the standard effect of the car's resulting actual price. The additional tests that the paper conducts suggest that the car buyer's price expectation, not the identified major price point in the car buyer's price expectation, is the reference point that lead to the estimated reference-price effects. Unobserved stockpiling by consumers, a major confounding factor for most estimated reference-price effects, does not confound the paper's test.

Reference-Dependent Preferences

Reference-Dependent Preferences PDF Author: Evelyn Stommel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3658006358
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Most of our daily decisions are made under uncertainty and risk, without complete information about all relevant aspects. We all constantly make such decisions, from the simplest “should I take my raincoat today?” to more serious examples, such as those on investment and portfolio decisions, holding of shares, insurance patterns, or negotiation processes. Within these situations, the bounded rationality of individuals and institutions towards risk and uncertainty is embedded. The central theory underlying this study is prospect theory, an adequate model to predict the real and most often bounded rationality of human behavior given certain incentives, preferences, and constraints. Evelyn Stommel investigates a crucial question within behavioral economics, namely the research on reference points within human decision making processes. Based on experimental investigations, she focuses three key challenges: what constitutes a reference point, the process of the formation of a reference point, and factors influencing the formation of reference points.

The Role of Reference-Dependent Preferences in Auctions and Negotiations

The Role of Reference-Dependent Preferences in Auctions and Negotiations PDF Author: Antonio Rosato
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This dissertation consists of three chapters exploring the role that reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion play in auctions and negotiations. The first chapter characterizes the profit-maximizing pricing and product-availability strategies for a retailer selling two substitute goods to loss-averse consumers, showing that limited-availability sales can manipulate consumers into an ex-ante unfavorable purchase. When the products have similar social value, the seller maximizes profits by raising the consumers' reference point through a tempting discount on a good available only in limited supply (the bargain) and cashing in with a high price on the other good (the rip-off), which the consumers buy if the bargain is not available to minimize their disappointment. The price difference between the bargain and the rip-off is larger when the products are close substitutes than when they are distant substitutes; hence dispersion in prices and dispersion in consumers' valuations are inversely related. The seller might prefer to offer a deal on the more valuable product, using it as a bait, because consumers feel a larger loss, in terms of forgone consumption, if this item is not available and are hence willing to pay a larger premium to reduce the uncertainty in their consumption outcomes. I also show that the bargain item can be a loss leader, that the seller's product line is not welfare-maximizing and that she might supply a socially wasteful product. The second chapter studies sequential first-price and second-price auctions when bidders are expectations-based loss-averse. A large body of empirical research in auctions documents that prices of identical products sold sequentially tend to decline across auctions (a phenomenon which has been dubbed "declining price anomaly" or "afternoon effect", as often later auctions take place in the afternoon whereas the first ones usually take place in the morning) . In this chapter I argue that expectations-based reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion provide an alternative, preference-based, explanation for the afternoon effect observed in sequential auctions. First, I show that when bidders have reference-dependent preferences, the equilibrium bidding functions are history-dependent, even if bidders have independent private values. The reason is that learning the type of the winner in the previous auction modifies a bidder's expectations about how likely he is to win in the current auction; and since expectations are the reference point, the optimal bid in each round is affected by this learning effect. More precisely, I identify what I call a "discouragement effect": the higher the type of the winner in the first auction is, the less aggressively the bidding behavior of the remaining bidders in the second auction. This discouragement effect in turn pushes bidders to bid more aggressively in the earlier auction. Moreover, the uncertainty about future own bids, due to the history-dependence of the equilibrium strategies, generates a precautionary bidding effect that pushes bidders to bid less aggressively in the first auction. The precautionary bidding effect and the anticipation of the discouragement effect go in opposite directions; when the latter effect is stronger, a declining price path arises in equilibrium. The third chapter studies the role of expectations-based reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion in a sequential bargaining game with one-sided incomplete information between a seller who makes all the offers and a buyer. I show that loss aversion eases the rent-efficiency trade-off for the seller who can now serve a larger measuer of consumers at an earlier stage. Thus, in equilibrium the seller achieves higher profits and we have less delay with loss aversion than without it. Furthermore, I also show that, besides increasing the seller's profit and overall trade efficiency, loss aversion also reallocates surplus among consumers by increasing the equilibrium payoff of some low-valuation buyers and decreasing that of high-valuation ones.

Handbook of Behavioral Economics - Foundations and Applications 1

Handbook of Behavioral Economics - Foundations and Applications 1 PDF Author:
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0444633898
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 749

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Book Description
Handbook of Behavioral Economics: Foundations and Applications presents the concepts and tools of behavioral economics. Its authors are all economists who share a belief that the objective of behavioral economics is to enrich, rather than to destroy or replace, standard economics. They provide authoritative perspectives on the value to economic inquiry of insights gained from psychology. Specific chapters in this first volume cover reference-dependent preferences, asset markets, household finance, corporate finance, public economics, industrial organization, and structural behavioural economics. This Handbook provides authoritative summaries by experts in respective subfields regarding where behavioral economics has been; what it has so far accomplished; and its promise for the future. This taking-stock is just what Behavioral Economics needs at this stage of its so-far successful career. Helps academic and non-academic economists understand recent, rapid changes in theoretical and empirical advances within behavioral economics Designed for economists already convinced of the benefits of behavioral economics and mainstream economists who feel threatened by new developments in behavioral economics Written for those who wish to become quickly acquainted with behavioral economics

Essays on Reference-Dependent Preferences

Essays on Reference-Dependent Preferences PDF Author: Rosario Claudia Macera Parra
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
This dissertation consists of two chapters exploring the economic implications of reference-dependent preferences over incentive design and belief formation. The first chapter studies the intertemporal allocation of incentives in a repeated moral hazard model. Beside consumption utility, reference-dependent agents experience utility from changes in their expectations about present and future income caused by the performance measure realization. In contrast to the prediction with classical preferences but consistent with real-world contracts, this paper shows that if consumption utility is not too concave and if changes in expectations about present income carries sufficiently larger weight in utility than changes in expectations about future income, the optimal contract defers all present incentives into future payments by setting a present fixed wage. Despite this prediction, I further prove that several standard features of the contract with classical preferences--no rents to the agent, conditions to achieve first-best cost and non-optimality of random contracts--still hold. The second chapter studies the temporal path of subjective beliefs when a reference-dependent agent who experiences standard anticipatory utility and utility from changes in these anticipatory feelings waits T periods for a binary outcome realization. Following the optimal beliefs literature, in each period the agent chooses a belief about her likelihood of success to maximize her intertemporal utility. Consistent with the empirical evidence, the model predicts that optimism decreases as the pay-off date approaches if the outcome is important enough or if the agent is sufficiently loss averse. Intuitively, when the pay-off date is distant disappointment is less salient than the joy of hoping favorable outcomes; as the realization date gets closer, however, the threat of disappointment becomes important. Applying the model to the optimal timing of productivity bonuses, I find these should be granted as frequently as possible because optimism acts as a non-pecuniary motivator that allows the principal to induce the desired effort path at a cheaper expected cost.

Am I Getting a Good Deal? Reference-Dependentdecision Making When the Reference Price is Uncertain

Am I Getting a Good Deal? Reference-Dependentdecision Making When the Reference Price is Uncertain PDF Author: Vincenzina Caputo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Models of consumer decision making commonly incorporate reference dependent preferences. In these models, the reference point is typically assumed to be known by the consumer. However, research on price recall and the reference formation process reveals that the reference price is often uncertain at the time of purchase. Reference price uncertainty creates ambiguity for the consumer about whether they are getting a good or bad deal. This paper develops a model of consumer choice in the presence of reference dependent preferences when the reference price is uncertain. Data from two empirical studies that vary the product category and order of the elicitation of reference prices show that the new model generally outperforms conventional discrete choice models that either ignore reference prices or treat reference prices as certain. The new model provides insights into the effect of reducing reference price uncertainty on consumer choice, and reveals that high uncertainty smoothes the kink in the demand curve that is present in traditional reference-price demand models.

A Model of Reference-dependent Preferences

A Model of Reference-dependent Preferences PDF Author: Botond Kőszegi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description


Expectations-Based Reference-Dependent Life-Cycle Consumption

Expectations-Based Reference-Dependent Life-Cycle Consumption PDF Author: Michaela Pagel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
I incorporate expectations-based reference-dependent preferences into a dynamic stochastic model to explain three major life-cycle consumption facts; the intuitions behind these three implications constitute novel connections between recent advances in behavioral economics and prominent ideas in the macro consumption literature. First, expectations-based loss aversion rationalizes excess smoothness and sensitivity in consumption, the puzzling empirical observation of lagged consumption responses to income shocks. Intuitively, in the event of an adverse shock, the agent delays painful cuts in consumption to allow his reference point to decrease. Second, the preferences generate a hump-shaped consumption profile. Early in life, consumption is low due to a first-order precautionary-savings motive, but as uncertainty resolves, this motive is dominated by time-inconsistent overconsumption, forcing consumption to decline toward the end of life. Third, consumption drops at retirement. When uncertainty is absent, the agent does not overconsume because he dislikes the associated certain loss in future consumption. Additionally, I obtain several new predictions about consumption; compare the preferences with habit formation, hyperbolic discounting, and temptation disutility; and structurally estimate the preference parameters.

Reference Points and Effort Provision

Reference Points and Effort Provision PDF Author: Johannes Abeler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 43

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Book Description
A key open question for theories of reference-dependent preferences is what determines the reference point. One candidate is expectations: what people expect could affect how they feel about what actually occurs. In a real-effort experiment, we manipulate the rational expectations of subjects and check whether this manipulation influences their effort provision. We find that effort provision is significantly different between treatments in the way predicted by models of expectation-based reference-dependent preferences: if expectations are high, subjects work longer and earn more money than if expectations are low.