[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cir/cirwor/2006s-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Session Effects in the Laboratory

Author

Listed:
  • Guillaume Fréchette
Abstract
In experimental economics, where subjects participate in different sessions, observations across subjects of a given session might exhibit more correlation than observations across subjects in different sessions. The problem of session effects is related to similar problems in many experimental and non-experimental fields. This paper attempts to clarify what the issues are and proposes a set of practical tests to identify the problem as well as ways to test for treatment effects in the presence of session-effects. Simulations are used to assess how these tests perform given the relatively small samples typical of experimental data sets. En économie expérimentale où les sujets participent à différentes sessions, les observations peuvent être plus corrélées à l'intérieur d'une même session qu'entre les participants ayant participé à différentes sessions. Ce type d'effet est présent également dans plusieurs autres domaines, autant expérimentaux que non-expérimentaux. Cette étude tente de mettre en lumière quelles sont les sources du problème et propose un ensemble de tests pour déterminer s'il y a ou non présence de corrélation intra-session dans une collecte de données, et pour identifier l'effet d'un traitement lorsque ce problème est présent. Des simulations ont été effectuées pour évaluer la performance de ces tests sur des échantillons avec peu d'observations, ce qui est commun lors de la collecte de données de type expérimental.

Suggested Citation

  • Guillaume Fréchette, 2006. "Session Effects in the Laboratory," CIRANO Working Papers 2006s-21, CIRANO.
  • Handle: RePEc:cir:cirwor:2006s-21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/2006s-21.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta & Salmon, Timothy C., 2008. "Revenue equivalence revisited," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 171-192, September.
    2. Apesteguia, Jose & Huck, Steffen & Oechssler, Jorg, 2007. "Imitation--theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 217-235, September.
    3. Van Huyck, John B & Battalio, Raymond C & Beil, Richard O, 1990. "Tacit Coordination Games, Strategic Uncertainty, and Coordination Failure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 234-248, March.
    4. Charness, Gary & Frechette, Guillaume R. & Qin, Cheng-Zhong, 2007. "Endogenous transfers in the Prisoner's Dilemma game: An experimental test of cooperation and coordination," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 287-306, August.
    5. Carpenter, Jeffrey P., 2007. "The demand for punishment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(4), pages 522-542, April.
    6. Fortin, Bernard & Lacroix, Guy & Villeval, Marie-Claire, 2007. "Tax evasion and social interactions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(11-12), pages 2089-2112, December.
    7. Fischbacher, Urs & Gachter, Simon & Fehr, Ernst, 2001. "Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 397-404, June.
    8. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2008. "Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(3), pages 414-427, August.
    9. Jordi Brandts & David J. Cooper, 2006. "A Change Would Do You Good .... An Experimental Study on How to Overcome Coordination Failure in Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 669-693, June.
    10. Chamberlain, Gary, 1982. "Multivariate regression models for panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 5-46, January.
    11. Gary Charness & Guillaume R. Frechette & John H. Kagel, 2004. "How Robust is Laboratory Gift Exchange?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(2), pages 189-205, June.
    12. Christoph Vanberg, 2008. "Why Do People Keep Their Promises? An Experimental Test of Two Explanations -super-1," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(6), pages 1467-1480, November.
    13. Andreas Blume & John Duffy & April Mitchell Franco, 2008. "Decentralized Organizational Learning: An Experimental Investigation," Working Paper 382, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised May 2009.
    14. Roth, Alvin E. & Vesna Prasnikar & Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara & Shmuel Zamir, 1991. "Bargaining and Market Behavior in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1068-1095, December.
    15. Gary Chamberlain, 1980. "Analysis of Covariance with Qualitative Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(1), pages 225-238.
    16. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    17. Kathleen Stern & Martha K. McClintock, 1998. "Regulation of ovulation by human pheromones," Nature, Nature, vol. 392(6672), pages 177-179, March.
    18. Cooper, Russell & DeJong, Douglas V. & Forsythe, Robert & Ross, Thomas W., 1996. "Cooperation without Reputation: Experimental Evidence from Prisoner's Dilemma Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 187-218, February.
    19. Nick Feltovich, 2003. "Nonparametric Tests of Differences in Medians: Comparison of the Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney and Robust Rank-Order Tests," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 6(3), pages 273-297, November.
    20. Chen, Yan & Katuščák, Peter & Ozdenoren, Emre, 2013. "Why canʼt a woman bid more like a man?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 181-213.
    21. Guillaume Fréchette & John H. Kagel & Massimo Morelli, 2005. "Behavioral Identification in Coalitional Bargaining: An Experimental Analysis of Demand Bargaining and Alternating Offers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(6), pages 1893-1937, November.
    22. Ham, John C. & Kagel, John H. & Lehrer, Steven F., 2005. "Randomization, endogeneity and laboratory experiments: the role of cash balances in private value auctions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1-2), pages 175-205.
    23. Croson, Rachel T. A., 1996. "Partners and strangers revisited," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 25-32, October.
    24. Friedman,Daniel & Sunder,Shyam, 1994. "Experimental Methods," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521456821, September.
    25. Aoyagi, Masaki & Fréchette, Guillaume, 2009. "Collusion as public monitoring becomes noisy: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 1135-1165, May.
    26. Kagel, John H & Harstad, Ronald M & Levin, Dan, 1987. "Information Impact and Allocation Rules in Auctions with Affiliated Private Values: A Laboratory Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(6), pages 1275-1304, November.
    27. Andreas Blume & John Duffy, 2004. "Organizational Learning: An Experimental Investigation," 2004 Meeting Papers 617, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    28. Seinen, Ingrid & Schram, Arthur, 2006. "Social status and group norms: Indirect reciprocity in a repeated helping experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 581-602, April.
    29. Arellano, Manuel, 2003. "Panel Data Econometrics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199245291.
    30. Uri Gneezy & Muriel Niederle & Aldo Rustichini, 2003. "Performance in Competitive Environments: Gender Differences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 1049-1074.
    31. Armantier, Olivier, 2004. "Does observation influence learning?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 221-239, February.
    32. Rick L. Williams, 2000. "A Note on Robust Variance Estimation for Cluster-Correlated Data," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 56(2), pages 645-646, June.
    33. John B. Van Huyck & Raymond C. Battalio & Richard O. Beil, 1991. "Strategic Uncertainty, Equilibrium Selection, and Coordination Failure in Average Opinion Games," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(3), pages 885-910.
    34. Andreas Blume & John Duffy & April M. Franco, 2009. "Decentralized Organizational Learning: An Experimental Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1178-1205, September.
    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. Suchon, Rémi & Houser, Daniel, 2022. "Image spillovers in groups and misreporting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 302-314.
    2. Bicchieri, Cristina & Dimant, Eugen & Xiao, Erte, 2021. "Deviant or wrong? The effects of norm information on the efficacy of punishment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 209-235.
    3. Julien Benistant & Remi Suchon, 2020. "It Does (not) Get Better: Expected Income Violation and Altruism," Working Papers ECARES 2020-35, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. Mickael Beaud & Mathieu Lefebvre & Julie Rosaz, 2023. "Other-regarding preferences and giving decision in a risky environment: experimental evidence," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 27(2), pages 359-385, June.
    5. Hu, Youxin & Kagel, John & Xu, Xiaoshu & Ye, Lixin, 2013. "Theoretical and experimental analysis of auctions with negative externalities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 269-291.
    6. Nickolas Gagnon & Kristof Bosmans & Arno Riedl, 2020. "The Effect of Unfair Chances and Gender Discrimination on Labor Supply," CESifo Working Paper Series 8058, CESifo.
    7. Jade Wong & Andreas Ortman & Alberto Motta & Le Zhang, 2013. "Understanding Social Impact Bonds and Their Alternatives: An Experimental Investigation," Discussion Papers 2013-21, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    8. Olivier Bonroy & Alexis Garapin & Hamilton Stephen & Diogo Souza-Monteiro, 2018. "Free-riding on product quality in cooperatives: lessons from an experiment," Post-Print hal-01815808, HAL.
    9. Alexander L. Brown & Rodrigo A. Velez, 2019. "Empirical bias and efficiency of alpha-auctions: experimental evidence," Papers 1905.03876, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2020.
    10. Embrey, Matthew & Hyndman, Kyle & Riedl, Arno, 2021. "Bargaining with a residual claimant: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 335-354.
    11. Gary Bolton & Axel Ockenfels & Peter Werner, 2016. "Leveraging social relationships and transparency in the insider game," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 2(2), pages 127-143, November.
    12. Douthit, Jeremy & Majerczyk, Michael, 2019. "Subordinate perceptions of the superior and agency costs: Theory and evidence," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    13. Le Zhang & Andreas Ortmann, 2012. "On the Interpretation of Giving, Taking, and Destruction in Dictator Games and Joy-of-Destruction Games," Discussion Papers 2012-50, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    14. Caleb A. Cox & Brock Stoddard, 2015. "Framing and Feedback in Social Dilemmas with Partners and Strangers," Games, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-19, September.
    15. Atasoy, Ayse Tugba & Madlener, Reinhard, 2020. "Default vs. Active Choices: An Experiment on Electricity Tariff Switching," FCN Working Papers 7/2020, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    16. Ulrich Bergmann & Arkady Konovalov, 2024. "Auction design and order of sale with budget-constrained bidders," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 27(1), pages 36-57, March.
    17. Benistant, Julien & Suchon, Rémi, 2021. "It does (not) get better: Reference income violation and altruism," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    18. McDonald, James & Stoddard, Olga & Walton, Daniel, 2018. "On using interval response data in experimental economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 9-16.
    19. Cox, Caleb A. & Stoddard, Brock, 2018. "Strategic thinking in public goods games with teams," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 31-43.
    20. Olivier Bonroy & Alexis Garapin & Stephen Hamilton & Diogo Souza-Monteiro, 2015. "Mislabelling in collective labels: an experimental analysis," Post-Print halshs-02096115, HAL.
    21. Nielsen, Kirby & Bhattacharya, Puja & Kagel, John H. & Sengupta, Arjun, 2019. "Teams promise but do not deliver," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 420-432.
    22. Priyodorshi Banerjee & P. Srikant & Sujoy Chakravarty, 2020. "Contracting Outcomes with Communication and Learning," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 8(1), pages 18-43, June.

    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. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    2. Peter H. Kriss & Roberto Weber, 2013. "Organizational formation and change: lessons from economic laboratory experiments," Chapters, in: Anna Grandori (ed.), Handbook of Economic Organization, chapter 14, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Nikiforakis, Nikos, 2010. "Feedback, punishment and cooperation in public good experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 689-702, March.
    4. Fehr, Dietmar, 2017. "Costly communication and learning from failure in organizational coordination," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 106-122.
    5. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    6. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    7. Francesco Feri & Bernd Irlenbusch & Matthias Sutter, 2010. "Efficiency Gains from Team-Based Coordination—Large-Scale Experimental Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1892-1912, September.
    8. Pedro Dal Bo & Andrew Foster & Louis Putterman, 2010. "Institutions and Behavior: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Democracy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2205-2229, December.
    9. Luca Corazzini & Christopher Cotton & Paola Valbonesi, 2013. "Too many charities? Insight from an experiment with multiple public goods and contribution thresholds," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0171, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    10. Takafumi Yamakawa & Yoshitaka Okano & Tatsuyoshi Saijo, 2016. "Detecting motives for cooperation in public goods experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 500-512, June.
    11. Pedro Dal Bo & Guillaume R. Frochette, 2011. "The Evolution of Cooperation in Infinitely Repeated Games: Experimental Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 411-429, February.
    12. Maoliang Ye & Jie Zheng & Plamen Nikolov & Sam Asher, 2020. "One Step at a Time: Does Gradualism Build Coordination?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 113-129, January.
    13. David J. Cooper & John Van Huyck, 2018. "Coordination and transfer," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(3), pages 487-512, September.
    14. Alós-Ferrer, Carlos & Weidenholzer, Simon, 2014. "Imitation and the role of information in overcoming coordination failures," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 397-411.
    15. Redzo Mujcic & Andreas Leibbrandt, 2018. "Indirect Reciprocity and Prosocial Behaviour: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(611), pages 1683-1699, June.
    16. Gunnthorsdottir, Anna & Vragov, Roumen & Mccabe, Kevin, 2007. "The meritocracy as a mechanism to overcome social dilemmas," MPRA Paper 2454, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Ghidoni, Riccardo & Suetens, Sigrid, 2019. "Empirical Evidence on Repeated Sequential Games," Other publications TiSEM ff3a441f-e196-4e45-ba59-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    18. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gaechter, 2008. "Heterogeneous Social Preferences And The Dynamics Of Free Riding In Public Good Experiments," Discussion Papers 2008-07, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    19. Giovanna Devetag & Andreas Ortmann, 2007. "When and why? A critical survey on coordination failure in the laboratory," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(3), pages 331-344, September.
    20. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    experimental economics; session effects; économie expérimentale; corrélation intra-session;
    All these keywords.

    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:cir:cirwor:2006s-21. 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: Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciranca.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.