IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/theord/v73y2012i3p465-499.html

Conflicting evidence and decisions by agency professionals: an experimental test in the context of merger regulation

Author

Listed:
  • Bruce Lyons

  • Gordon Menzies

  • Daniel Zizzo

Abstract

Many important regulatory decisions are taken by professionals employing limited and conflicting evidence. We conduct an experiment in a merger regulation setting, identifying the role of different standards of proof, volumes of evidence, cost of error and professional or lay decision making. The experiment was conducted on current practitioners from 11 different jurisdictions, in addition to student subjects. Legal standards of proof significantly affect decisions. There are specific differences because of professional judgment, including in how error costs and volume of evidence are taken into account. We narrow the range of explanations for why professional decision making matters. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Bruce Lyons & Gordon Menzies & Daniel Zizzo, 2012. "Conflicting evidence and decisions by agency professionals: an experimental test in the context of merger regulation," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 73(3), pages 465-499, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:theord:v:73:y:2012:i:3:p:465-499
    DOI: 10.1007/s11238-011-9258-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11238-011-9258-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11238-011-9258-3?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philippe Bacchetta & Eric van Wincoop, 2010. "Infrequent Portfolio Decisions: A Solution to the Forward Discount Puzzle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 870-904, June.
    2. Henckel, Timo & Menzies, Gordon D. & Prokhovnik, Nick & Zizzo, Daniel J., 2011. "Barro-Gordon revisited: Reputational equilibria with inferential expectations," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 144-147, August.
    3. Gordon Menzies & Daniel Zizzo, 2007. "Exchange Rate Markets And Conservative Inferential Expectations," CAMA Working Papers 2007-02, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    4. Menzies Gordon Douglas & Zizzo Daniel John, 2009. "Inferential Expectations," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-27, December.
    5. Goldberg, Michael D & Frydman, Roman, 1996. "Imperfect Knowledge and Behaviour in the Foreign Exchange Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(437), pages 869-893, July.
    6. Christoph Engel & Andreas Glöckner, 2008. "Can We Trust Intuitive Jurors? An Experimental Analysis," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics 2008_36, Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics.
    7. Friedman,Daniel & Sunder,Shyam, 1994. "Experimental Methods," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521456821, August.
    8. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 153-174, Spring.
    9. Davis, Michael L, 1994. "The Value of Truth and the Optimal Standard of Proof in Legal Disputes," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 343-359, October.
    10. Müller, Rudolf, 2001. "Auctions - the Big Winner Among Trading Mechanisms for the Internet Economy," Research Memorandum 015, Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    11. Klaus Abbink & Benedikt Herrmann, 2011. "The Moral Costs Of Nastiness," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(2), pages 631-633, April.
    12. Daniel L. Rubinfeld & David E.M. Sappington, 1987. "Efficient Awards and Standards of Proof in Judicial Proceedings," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(2), pages 308-315, Summer.
    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. Timo Henckel & Gordon D. Menzies & Daniel J. Zizzo, 2013. "The Great Recession and the Two Dimensions of European Central Bank Credibility," CAMA Working Papers 2013-55, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    2. Timo Henckel & Gordon Menzies & Peter Moffat & Daniel J. Zizzo, 2017. "Sticky Belief Adjustment: A Double Hurdle Model and Experimental Evidence," Working Paper Series 40, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.

    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. Bruce Lyons & Gordon Douglas Menzies & Daniel John Zizzo, 2009. "Professional interpretation of the standard of proof: An experimental test on merger regulation," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) 09-16, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    2. Christoph Engel, 2008. "Preponderance of the Evidence versus Intime Conviction. A Behavioural Perspective on a Conflict between American and Continental European Law," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics 2008_33, Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics.
    3. Gary Charness & David Masclet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "The Dark Side of Competition for Status," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(1), pages 38-55, January.
    4. Claude Fluet, 2020. "L'économie de la preuve judiciaire," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 96(4), pages 585-620.
    5. Hans-Theo Normann & Till Requate & Israel Waichman, 2014. "Do short-term laboratory experiments provide valid descriptions of long-term economic interactions? A study of Cournot markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(3), pages 371-390, September.
    6. Henckel, Timo & Menzies, Gordon D. & Prokhovnik, Nick & Zizzo, Daniel J., 2011. "Barro-Gordon revisited: Reputational equilibria with inferential expectations," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 144-147, August.
    7. Cleave, Blair L. & Nikiforakis, Nikos & Slonim, Robert, 2010. "Is There Selection Bias in Laboratory Experiments?," Working Papers 2010-01, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    8. Koch, Christian, 2013. "The Virtue Ethics Hypothesis: Is there a nexus between virtues and well-being?," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 80054, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. Chian Jones Ritten & Christopher Bastian & Jason F. Shogren & Thadchaigeni Panchalingam & Mariah D. Ehmke & Gregory Parkhurst, 2017. "Understanding Pollinator Habitat Conservation under Current Policy Using Economic Experiments," Land, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-13, August.
    10. Dominique Demougin & Claude Denys Fluet, 2004. "Deterrence vs Judicial Error: A Comparative View of Standards of Proof," CIRANO Working Papers 2004s-38, CIRANO.
    11. Simon Halliday, 2011. "Rarer Actions: Giving and Taking in Third-Party Punishment Games," SALDRU Working Papers 62, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    12. Cardella, Eric & Chiu, Ray, 2012. "Stackelberg in the lab: The effect of group decision making and “Cooling-off” periods," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1070-1083.
    13. Timo Henckel & Gordon Menzies & Daniel Zizzo, 2010. "Inferential Expectations and the Missing Middle of Price Changes," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 008, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    14. Dörschner, T. & Musshoff, O., 2015. "How do incentive-based environmental policies affect environment protection initiatives of farmers? An experimental economic analysis using the example of species richness," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 90-103.
    15. Gary Charness & David Masclet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "The Dark Side of Competition for Status (preprint)," Working Papers halshs-01090241, HAL.
    16. Gordon Menzies & Daniel Zizzo, 2007. "Exchange Rate Markets And Conservative Inferential Expectations," CAMA Working Papers 2007-02, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    17. Mehmet Bac & Parimal Kanti Bag, 2000. "Law Enforcement Costs and Legal Presumptions," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0194, Econometric Society.
    18. Demougin, Dominique & Fluet, Claude, 2006. "Preponderance of evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 963-976, May.
    19. Fiore, Annamaria, 2009. "Experimental Economics: Some Methodological Notes," MPRA Paper 12498, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Timo Henckel & Gordon Menzies & Peter Moffat & Daniel J. Zizzo, 2017. "Sticky Belief Adjustment: A Double Hurdle Model and Experimental Evidence," Working Paper Series 40, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • L33 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Comparison of Public and Private Enterprise and Nonprofit Institutions; Privatization; Contracting Out
    • L40 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - General
    • L50 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - General
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    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:kap:theord:v:73:y:2012:i:3:p:465-499. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.