IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/gamebe/v86y2014icp237-247.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impulse balance in the newsvendor game

Author

Listed:
  • Ockenfels, Axel
  • Selten, Reinhard

Abstract

One striking behavioral phenomenon is the “pull-to-center” bias in the newsvendor game: facing stochastic demand, subjects tend to order quantities between the expected profit maximizing quantity and mean demand. We show that the impulse balance equilibrium, which is based on a simple ex-post rationality principle along with an equilibrium condition, predicts the pull-to-center bias and other, more subtle observations in the laboratory newsvendor game.

Suggested Citation

  • Ockenfels, Axel & Selten, Reinhard, 2014. "Impulse balance in the newsvendor game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 237-247.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:86:y:2014:i:c:p:237-247
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2014.03.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825614000657
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.geb.2014.03.012?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mirko Kremer & Brent Moritz & Enno Siemsen, 2011. "Demand Forecasting Behavior: System Neglect and Change Detection," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(10), pages 1827-1843, October.
    2. Christoph Brunner & Colin F. Camerer & Jacob K. Goeree, 2011. "Stationary Concepts for Experimental 2 X 2 Games: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 1029-1040, April.
    3. Ockenfels, Axel & Selten, Reinhard, 2005. "Impulse balance equilibrium and feedback in first price auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 155-170, April.
    4. Jehiel, Philippe, 2005. "Analogy-based expectation equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 81-104, August.
    5. AJ A. Bostian & Charles A. Holt & Angela M. Smith, 2008. "Newsvendor "Pull-to-Center" Effect: Adaptive Learning in a Laboratory Experiment," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 10(4), pages 590-608, July.
    6. Teck-Hua Ho & Noah Lim & Tony Haitao Cui, 2010. "Reference Dependence in Multilocation Newsvendor Models: A Structural Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(11), pages 1891-1910, November.
    7. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Han Bleichrodt & Corina Paraschiv, 2007. "Loss Aversion Under Prospect Theory: A Parameter-Free Measurement," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(10), pages 1659-1674, October.
    8. McKelvey Richard D. & Palfrey Thomas R., 1995. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Normal Form Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 6-38, July.
    9. Nelson Lau & J. Neil Bearden, 2013. "Newsvendor Demand Chasing Revisited," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(5), pages 1245-1249, May.
    10. Gary E. Bolton & Axel Ockenfels & Ulrich W. Thonemann, 2012. "Managers and Students as Newsvendors," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(12), pages 2225-2233, December.
    11. Reinhard Selten & Klaus Abbink & Ricarda Cox, 2005. "Learning Direction Theory and the Winner’s Curse," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 8(1), pages 5-20, April.
    12. Gary E. Bolton & Elena Katok, 2008. "Learning by Doing in the Newsvendor Problem: A Laboratory Investigation of the Role of Experience and Feedback," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 10(3), pages 519-538, September.
    13. Reinhard Selten & Thorsten Chmura & Sebastian J. Goerg, 2011. "Stationary Concepts for Experimental 2 X 2 Games: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 1041-1044, April.
    14. Reinhard Selten & Thorsten Chmura, 2008. "Stationary Concepts for Experimental 2x2-Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 938-966, June.
    15. Mirko Kremer & Stefan Minner & Luk N. Van Wassenhove, 2010. "Do Random Errors Explain Newsvendor Behavior?," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 12(4), pages 673-681, July.
    16. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    17. Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt, 2001. "Ten Little Treasures of Game Theory and Ten Intuitive Contradictions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1402-1422, December.
    18. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    19. Maurice E. Schweitzer & Gérard P. Cachon, 2000. "Decision Bias in the Newsvendor Problem with a Known Demand Distribution: Experimental Evidence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(3), pages 404-420, March.
    20. Xuanming Su, 2008. "Bounded Rationality in Newsvendor Models," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 10(4), pages 566-589, May.
    21. Simon P. Anderson & Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt, 2004. "Noisy Directional Learning and the Logit Equilibrium," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 106(3), pages 581-602, October.
    22. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    23. Colin F. Camerer & Teck-Hua Ho & Juin-Kuan Chong, 2004. "A Cognitive Hierarchy Model of Games," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 861-898.
    24. Bolton, Gary E. & Ockenfels, Axel, 2012. "Behavioral economic engineering," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 665-676.
    25. V. P. Crawford, 2014. "Boundedly rational versus optimization-based models of strategic thinking and learning in games," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 5.
    26. Reinhard Selten & Klaus Abbink & Ricarda Cox, 2005. "Learning Direction Theory and the Winner’s Curse," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 8(1), pages 5-20, April.
    27. Michael Becker-Peth & Elena Katok & Ulrich W. Thonemann, 2013. "Designing Buyback Contracts for Irrational But Predictable Newsvendors," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(8), pages 1800-1816, August.
    28. Goeree, Jacob K. & Holt, Charles A., 2005. "An Explanation of Anomalous Behavior in Models of Political Participation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(2), pages 201-213, May.
    29. Lurie, Nicholas H. & Swaminathan, Jayashankar M., 2009. "Is timely information always better? The effect of feedback frequency on decision making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 315-329, March.
    30. Judith Avrahami & Werner Güth & Yaakov Kareev, 2005. "Games of Competition in a Stochastic Environment," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 255-294, December.
    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. Gary E. Bolton & David J. Kusterer & Johannes Mans, 2015. "Inflated reputations: Uncertainty, leniency & moral wiggle room in trader feedback systems," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 06-04, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences, revised 29 Jul 2016.
    2. Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Köster, Mats, 2017. "Salient compromises in the newsvendor game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 301-315.
    3. Sebastian J. Goerg & Tibor Neugebauer & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2016. "Impulse Response Dynamics in Weakest Link Games," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 17(3), pages 284-297, August.
    4. Lisa Bruttel, 2019. "Is There a Loyalty-Enhancing Effect of Retroactive Price-Reduction Schemes?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 54(3), pages 575-593, May.
    5. Vipin, B. & Amit, R.K., 2019. "Describing decision bias in the newsvendor problem: A prospect theory model," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 132-141.
    6. Gary E. Bolton & David J. Kusterer & Johannes Mans, 2019. "Inflated Reputations: Uncertainty, Leniency, and Moral Wiggle Room in Trader Feedback Systems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(11), pages 5371-5391, November.
    7. Edward Cartwright & Anna Stepanova, 2017. "Efficiency in a forced contribution threshold public good game," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 46(4), pages 1163-1191, November.
    8. Christian Köster & Heike Y. Schenk-Mathes, 2016. "Explanatory and predictive power of the adaptive learning model: average and heterogeneous behavior in a newsvendor context," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 86(4), pages 361-387, May.
    9. Bhavani Shanker Uppari & Sameer Hasija, 2019. "Modeling Newsvendor Behavior: A Prospect Theory Approach," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 481-500, July.
    10. Becker-Peth, Michael & Thonemann, Ulrich W., 2016. "Reference points in revenue sharing contracts—How to design optimal supply chain contracts," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(3), pages 1033-1049.
    11. Edward Cartwright & Anna Stepanova & Lian Xue, 2019. "Impulse balance and framing effects in threshold public good games," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 21(5), pages 903-922, October.
    12. Yun Shin Lee & Enno Siemsen, 2017. "Task Decomposition and Newsvendor Decision Making," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(10), pages 3226-3245, October.
    13. Zuzana Brokesova & Cary Deck & Jana Peliova, 2022. "Pull-to-center is not just for newsvendors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-16, February.
    14. Samuel N. Kirshner & Zhaolin Li, 2022. "Supply chain contracting with competing regretful retailers," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(6), pages 2196-2211, September.
    15. Federica Alberti & Anna Cartwright & Edward Cartwright, 2021. "Predicting Efficiency in Threshold Public Good Games: A Learning Direction Theory Approach," Working Papers in Economics & Finance 2021-01, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Business School, Economics and Finance Subject Group.
    16. Karl H.Schlag, 2015. "Who gives Direction to Statistical Testing? Best Practice meets Mathematically Correct Tests," Vienna Economics Papers 1512, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    17. Christian Köster & Heike Schenk-Mathes & Christopher Specht, 2019. "Explanatory power of behavioral models in the newsvendor problem: a simulation study," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 27(2), pages 311-324, June.
    18. Suresh P. Sethi & Sushil Gupta & Vipin K. Agrawal & Vijay K. Agrawal, 2022. "Nobel laureates’ contributions to and impacts on operations management," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(12), pages 4283-4303, December.

    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. Becker-Peth, Michael & Thonemann, Ulrich W., 2016. "Reference points in revenue sharing contracts—How to design optimal supply chain contracts," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(3), pages 1033-1049.
    2. Yun Shin Lee & Enno Siemsen, 2017. "Task Decomposition and Newsvendor Decision Making," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(10), pages 3226-3245, October.
    3. Karen Donohue & Özalp Özer, 2020. "Behavioral Operations: Past, Present, and Future," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 22(1), pages 191-202, January.
    4. Christian Köster & Heike Y. Schenk-Mathes, 2016. "Explanatory and predictive power of the adaptive learning model: average and heterogeneous behavior in a newsvendor context," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 86(4), pages 361-387, May.
    5. Castañeda, Jaime Andrés & Gonçalves, Paulo, 2018. "Ordering behavior in a newsstand experiment," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 186-196.
    6. Kirman, Alan P. & Laisney, François & Pezanis-Christou, Paul, 2018. "Exploration vs exploitation, impulse balance equilibrium, and a specification test for the El Farol bar problem," ZEW Discussion Papers 18-038, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    7. Yinghao Zhang & Karen Donohue & Tony Haitao Cui, 2016. "Contract Preferences and Performance for the Loss-Averse Supplier: Buyback vs. Revenue Sharing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1734-1754, June.
    8. Tony Haitao Cui & Guangwen Kong & Behrooz Pourghannad, 2020. "Is Simplicity the Ultimate Sophistication? The Superiority of Linear Pricing," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(7), pages 1767-1788, July.
    9. Alan Kirman & François Laisney & Paul Pezanis-Christou, 2023. "Relaxing the symmetry assumption in participation games: a specification test for cluster-heterogeneity," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(4), pages 850-878, September.
    10. Anna‐Lena Sachs & Michael Becker‐Peth & Stefan Minner & Ulrich W. Thonemann, 2022. "Empirical newsvendor biases: Are target service levels achieved effectively and efficiently?," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(4), pages 1839-1855, April.
    11. Samuel N. Kirshner & Brent B. Moritz, 2023. "For the future and from afar: Psychological distance and inventory decision‐making," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(1), pages 170-188, January.
    12. Villa, Sebastián & Castañeda, Jaime Andrés, 2018. "Transshipments in supply chains: A behavioral investigation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 269(2), pages 715-729.
    13. Li Chen & A. Gürhan Kök & Jordan D. Tong, 2013. "The Effect of Payment Schemes on Inventory Decisions: The Role of Mental Accounting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(2), pages 436-451, September.
    14. Diego D’Urso & Ferdinando Chiacchio & Evangelia Demerouti, 2021. "Measuring How Decision Support Systems Improve Newsvendors’ Performance: The Subjects’ Version," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-16, September.
    15. Bhavani Shanker Uppari & Sameer Hasija, 2019. "Modeling Newsvendor Behavior: A Prospect Theory Approach," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 481-500, July.
    16. Foster, Joshua & Deck, Cary & Farmer, Amy, 2019. "Behavioral demand effects when buyers anticipate inventory shortages," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(1), pages 217-234.
    17. Ubøe, Jan & Andersson, Jonas & Jörnsten, Kurt & Lillestøl, Jostein & Sandal, Leif K., 2014. "Probabilistic cost efficiency and bounded rationality in the newsvendor model," Discussion Papers 2014/41, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    18. Edward Cartwright & Anna Stepanova, 2017. "Efficiency in a forced contribution threshold public good game," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 46(4), pages 1163-1191, November.
    19. Crawford, VP, 2014. "Boundedly rational versus optimization-based models of strategic thinking and learning in games," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt04h694rz, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    20. Yingshuai Zhao & Xiaobo Zhao, 2016. "How a competing environment influences newsvendor ordering decisions," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(1), pages 204-214, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Newsvendor game; Impulse balance equilibrium; Ex-post rationality; Economic cognition; Behavioral operations management; Experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • M11 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Production Management

    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:eee:gamebe:v:86:y:2014:i:c:p:237-247. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622836 .

    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.