Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/185705 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Paper No. 35
Publisher: 
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition, München und Berlin
Abstract: 
Experimenters have to make theoretically irrelevant decisions concerning user interfaces and ordering or labeling of options. Such presentation decisions affect behavior and cause results to appear contradictory across experiments, obstructing utility estimation and policy recommendations. The present paper derives a model of choice allowing analysts to control for both presentation effects and stochastic errors in econometric analyses. I test the model in a comprehensive re-analysis of dictator game experiments. Controlling for presentation effects, preference estimates are consistent across experiments and predictive out-of-sample, highlighting the fundamental role of presentation for choice, and this notwithstanding the possibility of reliable estimation and prediction.
Subjects: 
discrete choice
presentation effects
utility estimation
counterfactual predictions
laboratory experiment
JEL: 
C10
C90
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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