IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cca/wpaper/223.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Self-serving biased reference points

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Gallice

Abstract

This paper formalizes the pervasive phenomenon of the self-serving bias within the framework of reference dependent preferences. This formulation allows the stating of a simple rule to assess the existence of the bias at the aggregate level as well as a procedure that identifies the minimum number of biased agents. We apply the model to two standard situations: a litigation between a plaintiff and a defendant and a bankruptcy problem. In the litigation case, we show how the combination of self-serving bias and reference dependent preferences increases the likelihood that a dispute proceeds to trial. In the bankruptcy case, we show how the existence of individuals with self-serving biased reference points exacerbates the conflict between equity and efficiency of the final allocation.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Gallice, 2011. "Self-serving biased reference points," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 223, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    • Handle: RePEc:cca:wpaper:223
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.carloalberto.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/no.223.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    2. Bruno Heyndels & John Ashworth, 2003. "Self–Serving Bias in Tax Perceptions: Federalism as a Source of Political Instability," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 47-68, February.
    3. Lucian Arye Bebchuk, 1984. "Litigation and Settlement under Imperfect Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(3), pages 404-415, Autumn.
    4. Linda Babcock & George Loewenstein, 1997. "Explaining Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-Serving Biases," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 109-126, Winter.
    5. Thomson, William, 2003. "Axiomatic and game-theoretic analysis of bankruptcy and taxation problems: a survey," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 249-297, July.
    6. 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..
    7. B. Douglas Bernheim & Antonio Rangel, 2005. "Behavioral Public Economics: Welfare and Policy Analysis with Non-Standard Decision-Makers," NBER Working Papers 11518, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Eric Langlais, 2008. "Asymmetric information, self-serving bias and the pretrial negotiation impasse," EconomiX Working Papers 2008-30, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    9. Farmer, Amy & Pecorino, Paul, 2002. "Pretrial bargaining with self-serving bias and asymmetric information," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 163-176, June.
    10. Babcock, Linda, et al, 1995. "Biased Judgments of Fairness in Bargaining," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1337-1343, 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. Andrea Gallice, 2022. "Bankruptcy Problems with Self-Serving Biased Reference Points," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 683 JEL Classification: D, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    2. Mori, Yusuke & 森, 祐介, 2012. "How Can Integration Reduce Inefficiencies Due to Ex Post Adaptation?," Working Paper Series 142, Center for Japanese Business Studies (HJBS), Graduate School of Commerce and Management Hitotsubashi University.
    3. Andrea Gallice, 2012. "Strategic announcements of reference points in disputes and litigations," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 279, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    4. Andrea Gallice, 2020. "Self-Serving Biased Reference Points in Bankruptcy Problems," Working papers 067, Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino.
    5. Husnain Fateh Ahmad, 2020. "Self serving reference points in k−double auctions," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(1), pages 77-85, January.
    6. Yusuke Mori, 2013. "A Formal Behavioral Model of Firm Boundaries: Why Does Authority Relation Mitigate Ex Post Adaptation Problems?," ISER Discussion Paper 0863, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.

    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. Andrea Gallice, 2022. "Bankruptcy Problems with Self-Serving Biased Reference Points," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 683 JEL Classification: D, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    2. Andrea Gallice, 2020. "Self-Serving Biased Reference Points in Bankruptcy Problems," Working papers 067, Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino.
    3. Andrea Gallice, 2012. "Strategic announcements of reference points in disputes and litigations," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 279, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    4. Cédric Argenton & Xiaoyu Wang, 2023. "Litigation and settlement under loss aversion," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 369-402, October.
    5. Husnain Fateh Ahmad, 2020. "Self serving reference points in k−double auctions," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(1), pages 77-85, January.
    6. Nathalie Chappe & Raphaël Giraud, 2013. "Confidence, Optimism and Litigation: A Litigation Model under Ambiguity," Working Papers hal-04287896, HAL.
    7. Wulf Gaertner & Richard Bradley & Yongsheng Xu & Lars Schwettmann, 2019. "Against the proportionality principle: Experimental findings on bargaining over losses," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(7), pages 1-18, July.
    8. Merlone, Ugo & Lupano, Matteo, 2022. "Third party funding: The minimum claim value," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 296(2), pages 738-747.
    9. Bazerman, Max H. & Sezer, Ovul, 2016. "Bounded awareness: Implications for ethical decision making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 95-105.
    10. Eric LANGLAIS, 2010. "An Analysis Of Bounded Rationality In Judicial Litigations The Case With Loss Disappointment Averse Plaintiffs," Journal of Advanced Research in Law and Economics, ASERS Publishing, vol. 1(1), pages 42-50.
    11. Fosgerau, Mogens, 2008. "Hedonic preferences, symmetric loss aversion and the willingness to pay-willingness to accept gap," MPRA Paper 10041, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Hong Luo & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2017. "Copyright Enforcement: Evidence from Two Field Experiments," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 499-528, June.
    13. Osório, António, 2017. "Self-interest and equity concerns: A behavioural allocation rule for operational problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 261(1), pages 205-213.
    14. Simon Gächter & Arno Riedl, 2005. "Moral Property Rights in Bargaining with Infeasible Claims," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(2), pages 249-263, February.
    15. Éric Langlais, 2008. "Indemnisation des préjudices et fréquence des procès en présence d'une asymétrie d'information sur l'aversion au risque des parties," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 74(2), pages 191-218.
    16. Lindsey, Robin, 2011. "State-dependent congestion pricing with reference-dependent preferences," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 45(10), pages 1501-1526.
    17. Claudia M. Landeo, 2018. "Law and economics and tort litigation institutions: theory and experiments," Chapters, in: Joshua C. Teitelbaum & Kathryn Zeiler (ed.), Research Handbook on Behavioral Law and Economics, chapter 9, pages 247-268, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Alex Lehr & Jana Vyrastekova & Agnes Akkerman & René Torenvlied, 2018. "Horizontal and vertical spillovers in wage bargaining: A theoretical framework and experimental evidence," Rationality and Society, , vol. 30(1), pages 3-53, February.
    19. Eric Langlais, 2008. "Asymmetric information, self-serving bias and the pretrial negotiation impasse," EconomiX Working Papers 2008-30, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    20. Yoshio Kamijo & Koji Yokote, 2022. "Behavioral bargaining theory: Equality bias, risk attitude, and reference-dependent utility," Working Papers 2208, Waseda University, Faculty of Political Science and Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    self-serving bias; reference dependent preferences; litigation; trial vs settlement; bankruptcy problem; optimal allocation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    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:cca:wpaper:223. 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: Giovanni Bert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fccaait.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.