IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/wzbmbh/spii2014207.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The curse of knowledge increases self-selection into competition: Experimental evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Danz, David

Abstract

The psychology literature provides ample evidence that people have difficulties taking the perspective of less-informed others. This paper presents a controlled experiment showing that this "curse of knowledge" can cause comparative overconfidence and overentry into competition. In a broader context, the results provide an explanation for the overconfidence of nascent entrepreneurs and the substantial rate of failure among new businesses.

Suggested Citation

  • Danz, David, 2014. "The curse of knowledge increases self-selection into competition: Experimental evidence," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2014-207, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2014207
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/101453/1/796700478.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Chen, Si & Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah, 2018. "Looking at the bright side: The motivation value of overconfidence," DICE Discussion Papers 291, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    2. Pierrot, Thibaud, 2019. "Negotiation under the curse of knowledge," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2019-211r, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, revised 2019.
    3. Madarász, Kristóf & Danz, David & Wang, Stephanie, 2018. "The Biases of Others: Projection Equilibrium in an Agency Setting," CEPR Discussion Papers 12867, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Danz, David, 2020. "Never underestimate your opponent: Hindsight bias causes overplacement and overentry into competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 588-603.
    5. Chen, Si & Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah, 2019. "Looking at the bright side: The motivational value of confidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    curse of knowledge; hindsight bias; information projection; overconfidence; sorting; incentive schemes; competition; beliefs; experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2014207. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vawzbde.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.