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Articles 1 - 30 of 44
Full-Text Articles in Law
Horizontal Product Differentiation In Auctions And Multilateral Negotiations, Bart J. Wilson, Charles J. Thomas
Horizontal Product Differentiation In Auctions And Multilateral Negotiations, Bart J. Wilson, Charles J. Thomas
Bart J. Wilson
We experimentally compare first-price auctions and multilateral negotiations after introducing horizontal product differentiation into a standard procurement setting. Both institutions yield identical surplus for the buyer, a difference from prior findings with homogeneous products that results from differentiation’s influence on sellers’ pricing behavior. The data are consistent with this finding being driven by concessions from low-cost sellers in response to differentiation reducing their likelihood of being the buyer’s surplus-maximizing trading partner. Further analysis shows that introducing product differentiation increases or leaves unchanged the intensity of price competition among sellers, which contrasts with the conventional wisdom that product differentiation softens competition.
Using Experimental Economics To Understand Competition, Bart Wilson
Using Experimental Economics To Understand Competition, Bart Wilson
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
A Comparative Approach To Coordination: How Apes, Monkeys And Humans Respond To An Assurance Game With Equivalent Procedures, Bart Wilson, Sarah Brosnan
A Comparative Approach To Coordination: How Apes, Monkeys And Humans Respond To An Assurance Game With Equivalent Procedures, Bart Wilson, Sarah Brosnan
Bart J. Wilson
Our research directly compares coordinated decision making across the entire primate lineage, including a new-world monkey, an old-world monkey, an ape, and humans, to help understand how decision making is different between these species. We find that the ability to coordinate on a mutually beneficial decision does vary across species, that there is variability within each taxonomic group, and that this variation overlaps between groups. Each species represents a continuum, with pairs of each species ranging from random outcomes to those which coordinate on the payoff dominant outcome. What differs is the frequency of payoff dominant outcomes within each species.
Geography And Social Networks In Nascent Distal Exchange, Bart Wilson, Erik Kimbrough
Geography And Social Networks In Nascent Distal Exchange, Bart Wilson, Erik Kimbrough
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
An Experimental Analysis Of The Demand For Payday Loans, Bart J. Wilson, David W. Findlay, James W. Meehan, Charissa P. Wellford, Karl Schurter
An Experimental Analysis Of The Demand For Payday Loans, Bart J. Wilson, David W. Findlay, James W. Meehan, Charissa P. Wellford, Karl Schurter
Bart J. Wilson
The payday loan industry is one of the fastest growing segments of the consumer financial services market in the United States. The purpose of our study is to design an environment similar to the one that payday loan customers face. We then conduct a laboratory experiment to examine what effect, if any, the existence of payday loans has on individuals' abilities to manage and to survive financial setbacks. Our primary objective is to examine whether access to payday loans improves or worsens the likelihood of survival in our experiment. We also test the degree to which people's use of payday …
The Ecological And Civil Mainsprings Of Property: An Experimental Economic History Of Whalers’ Rules Of Capture, Bart J. Wilson, Taylor Jaworski, Karl Schurter, Andrew Smyth
The Ecological And Civil Mainsprings Of Property: An Experimental Economic History Of Whalers’ Rules Of Capture, Bart J. Wilson, Taylor Jaworski, Karl Schurter, Andrew Smyth
Bart J. Wilson
This paper uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18th and 19th century developed rules of conduct that minimized the sum of the transaction and production costs of capturing their prey, the primary implication being that different ecological conditions lead to different rules of capture. Holding everything else constant, we find that simply imposing two different types of prey is insufficient to observe two different rules of capture. Another factor is essential, namely that the members of the community are civil-minded.
An Experimental Analysis Of The Demand For Payday Loans, Bart Wilson, David Findlay, James Meehan Jr., Charissa Wellford, Karl Schurter
An Experimental Analysis Of The Demand For Payday Loans, Bart Wilson, David Findlay, James Meehan Jr., Charissa Wellford, Karl Schurter
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
Justice And Fairness In The Dictator Game, Bart Wilson, Karl Schurter
Justice And Fairness In The Dictator Game, Bart Wilson, Karl Schurter
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
An Experimental Inquiry Into The Social Construction Of Property, Bart Wilson, Vernon Smith
An Experimental Inquiry Into The Social Construction Of Property, Bart Wilson, Vernon Smith
Bart J. Wilson
We design a laboratory experiment to explore whether and how property rights emerge in a specialization and exchange environment where theft is costless. Additional treatments examine various enforcement mechanisms to determine whether private actions can produce agreement to respect property. We find that although an absence of exogenous enforcement does not hamper property’s emergence in all cases, private enforcement instruments tend to worsen outcomes. Property emerges when subjects form groups, understand potential gains from trade, convince group members that all benefit by avoiding theft, and display credible commitment to cooperation in their actions. In other words, as Hume argued in …
Fixed Revenue Auctions: Theory And Behavior, Bart Wilson, Cary Deck
Fixed Revenue Auctions: Theory And Behavior, Bart Wilson, Cary Deck
Bart J. Wilson
In this paper, we study auctions in which the revenue is fixed but the quantity is determined by the auction mechanism. Specifically, we investigate the theory and behavior of English quantity clock, Dutch quantity clock, last-quantity sealed bid, and penultimate-quantity sealed bid auctions. For theoretically equivalent fixed quantity and fixed revenue auctions, we find that fixed revenue auctions are robust to all the previously observed empirical regularities in fixed quantity auctions.
Building A Market: From Personal To Impersonal Exchange, Bart Wilson, Erik Kimbrough, Vernon Smith
Building A Market: From Personal To Impersonal Exchange, Bart Wilson, Erik Kimbrough, Vernon Smith
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
Experimental Gasoline Markets, Bart Wilson, Cary Deck
Experimental Gasoline Markets, Bart Wilson, Cary Deck
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
An Experimental Analysis Of The Effects Of Automated Mitigation Procedures On Investment And Prices In Wholesale Electricity Markets, Bart Wilson, Lynne Kiesling
An Experimental Analysis Of The Effects Of Automated Mitigation Procedures On Investment And Prices In Wholesale Electricity Markets, Bart Wilson, Lynne Kiesling
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
Promoting Experimental Economics In The Classroom, Bart J. Wilson, Stephen Jackstadt, Paul R. Johnson
Promoting Experimental Economics In The Classroom, Bart J. Wilson, Stephen Jackstadt, Paul R. Johnson
Bart J. Wilson
Economic experiments allow the K-12 teacher to promote active learning that is also rigorously grounded in economic theory. In an experiment students test for themselves the economics they hear in lectures and read in their textbooks. The authors have found that working through the existing teacher professional development system is a promising approach to infusing experimental methods into the school curriculum. This paper describes a short professional development course in experimental economics. The experience of conducting the course with two groups of teachers is discussed and survey results pertaining to teacher implementation of classroom experiments are presented.
Historical Property Rights, Sociality, And The Emergence Of Impersonal Exchange In Long-Distance Trade, Bart J. Wilson, Erik Kimbrough, Vernon L. Smith
Historical Property Rights, Sociality, And The Emergence Of Impersonal Exchange In Long-Distance Trade, Bart J. Wilson, Erik Kimbrough, Vernon L. Smith
Bart J. Wilson
This laboratory experiment explores the extent to which impersonal exchange emerges from personal exchange with opportunities for long-distance trade. We design a three-commodity production and exchange economy in which agents in three geographically separated villages must develop multilateral exchange networks to import a third good only available abroad. For treatments, we induce two distinct institutional histories to investigate how past experience with property rights affect the evolution of specialization and exchange. We find that a history of un-enforced property rights hinders our subjects' ability to develop the requisite personal social arrangements necessary to support specialization and effectively exploit impersonal long-distance …
Equilibrium Price Dispersion, Mergers And Synergies: An Experimental Investigation Of Differentiated Product Competition, Bart Wilson, Douglas Davis
Equilibrium Price Dispersion, Mergers And Synergies: An Experimental Investigation Of Differentiated Product Competition, Bart Wilson, Douglas Davis
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
Exchange And Specializiation As A Discovery Process, Bart J. Wilson, Sean Crockett, Vernon L. Smith
Exchange And Specializiation As A Discovery Process, Bart J. Wilson, Sean Crockett, Vernon L. Smith
Bart J. Wilson
In this paper we study the performance of an economic environment that can support specialization if the participants implement and develop some system of exchange. We define a closed economy in which the participants must discover the ability to exchange, implement it, and ascertain what they are comparatively advantaged in producing. Many people demonstrate the ability to find comparative advantage, capture gains from trade, and effectively choose production that is consistent with the choices of others. However, many do not become specialists, even though full efficiency can only be achieved if everyone does so. Near-full efficiency does occur bilaterally in …
Tracking Customer Search To Price Discriminate, Bart Wilson, Carey Deck
Tracking Customer Search To Price Discriminate, Bart Wilson, Carey Deck
Bart J. Wilson
The electronic technologies of the Internet make it possible for sellers to track potential customers and discriminate between the informed and uninformed. In this article, we report an experiment that investigates the market impact of firms tracking customers and offering discriminatory prices based on search history. We find that consumers, on average, face the same prices when sellers have the ability to track customers and price discriminate as when sellers post a single price for all buyers. However, informed buyers receive lower prices when sellers can detect buyer search, whereas uninformed buyers receive lower prices when firms cannot track customers.
Experimental Gasoline Markets, Bart Wilson, Cary Deck
Experimental Gasoline Markets, Bart Wilson, Cary Deck
Bart J. Wilson
Zone pricing in wholesale gasoline markets is a contentious topic in the public policy debate. Refiners contend that they use zone pricing to be competitive with local rivals. Critics claim that zone pricing benefits the oil industry and harms consumers. With a controlled experiment, we investigate the competitive effects of zone pricing on consumers, retail stations, and refiners vis-a-vis the proposed policy prescription of uniform wholesale pricing to retailers. We also examine the issue of divorcement and the rockets and feathers phenomenon. The former is the legal restriction that refiners and retailers cannot be vertically integrated, and the latter is …
Raising Revenues For Charity: Auctions Versus Lotteries, Bart Wilson, Douglas Davis, L. Razzolini, R. Reily
Raising Revenues For Charity: Auctions Versus Lotteries, Bart Wilson, Douglas Davis, L. Razzolini, R. Reily
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
Verifiable Offers And The Relationship Between Auctions And Multilateral Negotiations, Bart Wilson, Charles Thomas
Verifiable Offers And The Relationship Between Auctions And Multilateral Negotiations, Bart Wilson, Charles Thomas
Bart J. Wilson
We use the experimental method to compare second-price auctions with 'verifiable' multilateral negotiations in which the sole buyer can credibly reveal to sellers the best price offer he currently holds. Despite the two institutions' seeming equivalence, we find that prices are lower in verifiable multilateral negotiations than in second-price auctions. The difference occurs because low-cost sellers in negotiations often submit initial offers below the second-lowest cost. We also compare the two institutions to previously studied first-price auctions and multilateral negotiations with non-verifiable offers. Second-price auctions yield the highest prices, followed in order by verifiable negotiations, non-verifiable negotiations and first-price auctions.
Auction Markets For Evaluations, Bart Wilson, Cary Deck
Auction Markets For Evaluations, Bart Wilson, Cary Deck
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
Market Power And Price Movements Over The Business Cycle, Bart Wilson, Stanley Reynolds
Market Power And Price Movements Over The Business Cycle, Bart Wilson, Stanley Reynolds
Bart J. Wilson
This paper develops and tests implications of an oligopoly-pricing model. The model predicts that during a demand expansion, the short run competitive price is a pure strategy Nash equilibrium but in a recession, firms set prices above the competitive price. Thus, price markups over the competitive price are countercyclical. Prices set during a recession are more variable than prices set in expansions because firms employ mixed strategy pricing in recessions. The empirical analysis utilizes Hamilton's time series switching regime filter to test the predictions of the model. Fourteen out of fifteen industries have fluctuations consistent with this oligopoly-pricing model.
An Experimental Analysis Of The Effects Of Automated Mitigation Procedures On Investment And Prices In Wholesale Electricity Markets, Bart J. Wilson, L. Lynne Kiesling
An Experimental Analysis Of The Effects Of Automated Mitigation Procedures On Investment And Prices In Wholesale Electricity Markets, Bart J. Wilson, L. Lynne Kiesling
Bart J. Wilson
In this paper we report the findings of an experiment that examines the effects of automated mitigation procedures (AMP) on capacity investment prices of suppliers in a wholesale electricity market. Specifically, in a 2 x 2 design we examine the effects of strong and weak market power incentives on markets with and without the AMP. We find that a type of soft relative offer cap does not affect overall investment in capacity. The AMP also does not reduce long-run wholesale electricity prices relative to markets in which no mitigation mechanism is in operation. The factor with the most significant effect …
Building A Market: From Personal To Impersonal Exchange, Bart Wilson, Erik Kimbrough, Vernon Smith
Building A Market: From Personal To Impersonal Exchange, Bart Wilson, Erik Kimbrough, Vernon Smith
Bart J. Wilson
Adam Smith identified two key components in the wealth creation process of human societies: exchange and specialization. More than two centuries later relatively little is understood about the underlying process by which people build exchange systems and discover comparative advantage. In this chapter we report on a pilot experiment that explores the social mainsprings that give rise to the market. Specifically, using cash-motivated participants we compare and contrast the personal, social interactions within a village with those of the participants engaged in long-distance trade among a system of interconnected virtual villages.
Teaching E-Commerce Through The Use Of Real-Time Interactive Laboratory Experiments, Bart Wilson, Roumen Vragov
Teaching E-Commerce Through The Use Of Real-Time Interactive Laboratory Experiments, Bart Wilson, Roumen Vragov
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
How Applicable Is The Dominant Firm Model Of Price Leadership, Bart Wilson
How Applicable Is The Dominant Firm Model Of Price Leadership, Bart Wilson
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
Economics At The Pump, Bart Wilson, Cary Deck
Economics At The Pump, Bart J. Wilson, Cary A. Deck
Economics At The Pump, Bart J. Wilson, Cary A. Deck
Bart J. Wilson
Policymakers are often tempted to implement various new laws and regulations intended to prevent gasoline price gouging. We recently carried out economic experiments to test such anti-gouging measures as mandated divorcement and uniform pricing, and we found that those regulations actually harm consumers rather than help them. The reason is simple: The well-meaning interventions are designed to manipulate market allocations, but they backfire because they cannot account for the complex incentives in an intricate industry. Changing the rules alters the behavior of refiners and station owners, which is why the legislation does not have its intended effect on market outcomes.
Cost Structures And Nash Play In Repeated Cournot Games, Bart Wilson, David Davis, Robert Reilly
Cost Structures And Nash Play In Repeated Cournot Games, Bart Wilson, David Davis, Robert Reilly
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.