NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Salience in Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect

Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli, Andrei Shleifer

NBER Working Paper No. 17761
Issued in January 2012
NBER Program(s):   AP   CF

We provide a novel account of experimental evidence for the endowment effect using the salience mechanism (Bordalo, Gennaioli, and Shleifer, 2011). The two-stage procedure implemented in experiments implies that the endowed good and other goods are evaluated in different contexts. We describe conditions under which the standard effect occurs, but also account for recent evidence such as a reverse endowment effect for bads and a role for reference prices in modulating the WTA-WTP gap.

Published: Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2012. "Salience in Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 47-52, May.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

Information about Free Papers

You should expect a free download if you are a subscriber, a corporate associate of the NBER, a journalist, an employee of the U.S. federal government with a ".GOV" domain name, or a resident of nearly any developing country or transition economy.

If you usually get free papers at work/university but do not at home, you can either connect to your work VPN or proxy (if any) or elect to have a link to the paper emailed to your work email address below. The email address must be connected to a subscribing college, university, or other subscribing institution. Gmail and other free email addresses will not have access.

E-mail:

Acknowledgments

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

 
Publications
Activities
Meetings
Data
People
About

Support
National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-868-3900; email: info@nber.org

Contact Us