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An Experimental Investigation of the Disparity between WTA and WTP for Lotteries

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  • Traub, Stefan
  • Schmidt, Ulrich

Abstract

In this paper we experimentally investigate the disparity between willingness-to-accept (WTA) and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for risky lotteries. The direction of the income effect is reversed by endowing subjects with the highest price of a lottery when asking the WTP question. Our results show that the income effect is too small to be the only source of the disparity. Since the disparity concentrates on a subsample of subjects, parametric and nonparametric tests of the WTA-WTP ratio may lead to contradictory results. The disparity is significantly reduced when background risk is introduced. That is, putting subjects always into a risky position could improve the contingent valuation method which is often concerned with the assessment of risky situations such as health risks, automobile safety, etc. --

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics in its series Economics Working Papers with number 2006,09.

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Date of creation: 2006
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Handle: RePEc:zbw:cauewp:4760

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Keywords: WTA-WTP disparity; lotteries; background risk; contingent valuation;

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References

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. John Hey & Andrea Morone & Ulrich Schmidt, 2009. "Noise and bias in eliciting preferences," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 213-235, December.
  2. Kontek, Krzysztof, 2010. "Density Based Regression for Inhomogeneous Data: Application to Lottery Experiments," MPRA Paper 22268, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  3. Kontek, Krzysztof, 2010. "Classifying Behaviors in Risky Choices," MPRA Paper 23845, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  4. Tibor Neugebauer, 2010. "Moral Impossibility in the Petersburg Paradox : A Literature Survey and Experimental Evidence," LSF Research Working Paper Series 10-14, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
  5. Kontek, Krzysztof, 2010. "Mean, Median or Mode? A Striking Conclusion From Lottery Experiments," MPRA Paper 21758, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  6. Shosh Shahrabani & Uri Benzion & Tal Shavit, 2008. "WTP and WTA in competitive and non-competitive environments," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 3, pages 153-161, February.
  7. Stefan T. Trautmann & Ulrich Schmidt, 2011. "Pricing risk and ambiguity: The effect of perspective taking," Kiel Working Papers 1727, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
  8. Kontek, Krzysztof, 2010. "Estimation of Peaked Densities Over the Interval [0,1] Using Two-Sided Power Distribution: Application to Lottery Experiments," MPRA Paper 22378, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  9. Raphaël Giraud, 2010. "On the interpretation of the WTP/WTA gap as imprecise utility: an axiomatic analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(1), pages 692-701.
  10. 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.

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