The Control Premium: A Preference for Payoff Autonomy
- (pp. 138-61)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
We document individuals' willingness to pay to control their own payoff. Experiment participants choose whether to bet on themselves or on a partner answering a quiz question correctly. Given participants' beliefs, which we elicit separately, expected-money maximizers would bet on themselves in 56.4 percent of the decisions. However, participants actually bet on themselves in 64.9 percent of their opportunities, reflecting an aggregate control premium. The average participant is willing to sacrifice 8 percent to 15 percent of expected asset-earnings to retain control. Thus, agents may incur costs to avoid delegating and studies inferring beliefs from choices may overestimate their results on overconfidence.Citation
Owens, David, Zachary Grossman, and Ryan Fackler. 2014. "The Control Premium: A Preference for Payoff Autonomy." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 6 (4): 138-61. DOI: 10.1257/mic.6.4.138Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C91 Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
- D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
- D82 Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
There are no comments for this article.
Login to Comment