IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jpbect/v8y2006i2p193-218.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Welfare Economics with Intransitive Revealed Preferences: A Theory of the Endowment Effect

Author

Listed:
  • H. LORNE CARMICHAEL
  • W. BENTLEY MACLEOD

Abstract

Economists use the standard rational model to predict behavior after a policy change and to determine the policy's welfare implications. Recent experimental observations are casting doubt on the predictive accuracy of the standard model, but the more realistic behavioral alternatives often provide a poor basis for making normative evaluations. This paper suggests that we can still predict behavior and measure welfare within the same model. We show that optimizing agents with standard preferences will in some cases behave as if they are subject to an endowment effect. Even so, we may still be able to uncover information about their preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • H. Lorne Carmichael & W. Bentley Macleod, 2006. "Welfare Economics with Intransitive Revealed Preferences: A Theory of the Endowment Effect," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 8(2), pages 193-218, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:8:y:2006:i:2:p:193-218
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2006.00260.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2006.00260.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2006.00260.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shogren, Jason F. & Seung Y. Shin & Dermot J. Hayes & James B. Kliebenstein, 1994. "Resolving Differences in Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 255-270, March.
    2. R. Myerson, 2010. "Nash Equilibrium and the History of Economic Theory," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 6.
    3. Young H. P., 1993. "An Evolutionary Model of Bargaining," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 145-168, February.
    4. James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian & Andrew Metrick, 2004. "For Better or for Worse: Default Effects and 401(k) Savings Behavior," NBER Chapters, in: Perspectives on the Economics of Aging, pages 81-126, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Herbert Dawid and Bentley MacLeod, 2001. "Holdup and the Evolution of Bargaining Conventions," Computing in Economics and Finance 2001 104, Society for Computational Economics.
    6. Ian Bateman & Alistair Munro & Bruce Rhodes & Chris Starmer & Robert Sugden, 1997. "A Test of the Theory of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 479-505.
    7. Steffen Huck & Georg Kirchsteiger & Jörg Oechssler, 2005. "Learning to like what you have - explaining the endowment effect," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(505), pages 689-702, July.
    8. Horowitz, John K. & McConnell, Kenneth E., 2002. "A Review of WTA/WTP Studies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 426-447, November.
    9. Tore Ellingsen, 1997. "The Evolution of Bargaining Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 581-602.
    10. Lorne Carmichael & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2003. "Caring About Sunk Costs: A Behavioral Solution to Holdup Problems with Small Stakes," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 106-118, April.
    11. Loomes, Graham & Sugden, Robert, 1983. "A Rationale for Preference Reversal," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 428-432, June.
    12. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1988. "Similarity and decision-making under risk (is there a utility theory resolution to the Allais paradox?)," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 145-153, October.
    13. Leland, Jonathan W, 1994. "Generalized Similarity Judgments: An Alternative Explanation for Choice Anomalies," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 151-172, October.
    14. Franciosi, Robert & Kujal, Praveen & Michelitsch, Roland & Smith, Vernon & Deng, Gang, 1996. "Experimental tests of the endowment effect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 213-226, August.
    15. Ian J. Bateman & Ian H. Langford & Alistair Munro & Chris Starmer & Robert Sugden, 2000. "Estimating Four Hicksian Welfare Measures for a Public Good: A Contingent Valuation Investigation," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 76(3), pages 355-373.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sousa, Yannick Ferreira De & Munro, Alistair, 2012. "Truck, barter and exchange versus the endowment effect: Virtual field experiments in an online game environment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 482-493.
    2. B. Douglas Bernheim, 2009. "Behavioral Welfare Economics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 267-319, 04-05.
    3. Bischoff, Ivo & Meckl, Jürgen, 2008. "Endowment effect theory, public goods and welfare," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1768-1774, October.
    4. 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.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. 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.
    2. Andrea Isoni, 2011. "The willingness-to-accept/willingness-to-pay disparity in repeated markets: loss aversion or ‘bad-deal’ aversion?," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 71(3), pages 409-430, September.
    3. Charles R. Plott & Kathryn Zeiler, 2005. "The Willingness to Pay–Willingness to Accept Gap, the "Endowment Effect," Subject Misconceptions, and Experimental Procedures for Eliciting Valuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 530-545, June.
    4. Brown, Thomas C., 2005. "Loss aversion without the endowment effect, and other explanations for the WTA-WTP disparity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 367-379, July.
    5. Ulrich Schmidt & Stefan Traub, 2009. "An Experimental Investigation of the Disparity Between WTA and WTP for Lotteries," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 66(3), pages 229-262, March.
    6. Sousa, Yannick Ferreira De & Munro, Alistair, 2012. "Truck, barter and exchange versus the endowment effect: Virtual field experiments in an online game environment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 482-493.
    7. Masatlioglu, Yusufcan & Uler, Neslihan, 2013. "Understanding the reference effect," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 403-423.
    8. William S. Neilson & Michael McKee & Robert P. Berrens, 2013. "Value and outcome uncertainty as explanations for the WTA vs WTP disparity," Chapters, in: John A. List & Michael K. Price (ed.), Handbook on Experimental Economics and the Environment, chapter 6, pages 171-189, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Susan Chilton & Michael Jones-Lee & Rebecca McDonald & Hugh Metcalf, 2012. "Does the WTA/WTP ratio diminish as the severity of a health complaint is reduced? Testing for smoothness of the underlying utility of wealth function," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 1-24, August.
    10. Jack Robles, 2008. "Evolution, bargaining, and time preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 35(1), pages 19-36, April.
    11. Tore Ellingsen & Magnus Johannesson, 2004. "Is There a Hold‐up Problem?," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 106(3), pages 475-494, October.
    12. Darla Hatton MacDonald & Mark Morrison & Mary Barnes, 2010. "Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept Compensation for Changes in Urban Water Customer Service Standards," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 24(12), pages 3145-3158, September.
    13. Zhao, Jinhua & Kling, Catherine L., 2001. "A new explanation for the WTP/WTA disparity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 293-300, December.
    14. Horowitz, John K. & McConnell, K. E., 2000. "Values elicited from open-ended real experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 221-237, March.
    15. Christina McGranaghan & Steven G. Otto, 2022. "Choice uncertainty and the endowment effect," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 65(1), pages 83-104, August.
    16. Sayman, Serdar & Onculer, Ayse, 2005. "Effects of study design characteristics on the WTA-WTP disparity: A meta analytical framework," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 289-312, April.
    17. Lindsay, Luke, 2019. "Adaptive loss aversion and market experience," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 43-61.
    18. Biel, Anders & Johansson-Stenman, Olof & Nilsson, Andreas, 2011. "The willingness to pay–willingness to accept gap revisited: The role of emotions and moral satisfaction," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 908-917.
    19. Christian Schwarz & Uwe Stroinski, 2009. "Is there a Walrasian Equilibrium in Exchange Markets with Endowment Effect?," Ruhr Economic Papers 0082, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    20. repec:zbw:rwirep:0082 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. John K. Horowitz & Kenneth E. McConnell & James J. Murphy, 2013. "Behavioral foundations of environmental economics and valuation," Chapters, in: John A. List & Michael K. Price (ed.), Handbook on Experimental Economics and the Environment, chapter 4, pages 115-156, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:8:y:2006:i:2:p:193-218. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/apettea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.