The winner's curse: Conditional reasoning and belief formation

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Koch, Christian and Penczynski, Stefan P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5477-6830 (2018) The winner's curse: Conditional reasoning and belief formation. Journal of Economic Theory, 174. 57–102. ISSN 0022-0531

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Abstract

In explaining the winner's curse, recent approaches have focused on one of two cognitive processes: conditional reasoning and belief formation. We provide the first joint experimental analysis of the role of these two obstacles. First, we observe that overbidding decreases significantly between a simple common-value auction and a transformed version of this auction that does not require conditional reasoning. Second, assistance in belief formation leads to comparable behavioral changes in both games. The two effects are of similar magnitude and amplify each other when jointly present. We conclude that the combination and the interaction of the two cognitive processes in auctions lead to relatively low strategic sophistication compared to other domains. The study's focus on games' objective cognitive challenges is potentially useful for improving predictions across games and complements the common focus on behavioral models and their explanatory power.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: auctions,winner's curse,conditional reasoning,beliefs
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Economic Theory
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural Economics
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 20 Dec 2017 06:06
Last Modified: 20 Apr 2023 00:45
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/65779
DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2017.12.002

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