Sander Onderstal

How (not) to raise money

We show that standard winner‐pay auctions are inept fund‐raising mechanisms because of the positive externality bidders forgo if they top another’s high bid. Revenues are suppressed as a result and remain finite even when bidders value a dollar donated the same as a dollar kept. This problem does not occur in lotteries and all‐pay auctions, where bidders pay irrespective of whether they win. We introduce a general class of all‐pay auctions, rank their revenues, and illustrate how they dominate lotteries and winner‐pay formats. The optimal fund‐raising mechanism is an all‐pay auction augmented with an entry fee and reserve price.

Equilibrium Selection in Cheap Talk Games: ACDC rocks when Other Criteria remain silent

In the past, many refinements have been proposed to select equilibria in cheap talk games. Usually, these refinements were motivated by a discussion of how rational agents would reason in some particular cheap talk games. In this paper, we propose a behavioral refinement and stability measure that is meant to predict actual behavior in a wide range of cheap talk games. According to our Average Credible Deviation Criterion (ACDC), the stability of an equilibrium is determined by the frequency and size of credible deviations. ACDC organizes the results from cheap talk experiments well, even in cases where other criteria remain silent.

Collusion and the Choice of Auction: An Experimental Study

We experimentally examine the collusive properties of two commonly used auctions: the English auction (EN) and the first-price sealed-bid auction (FPSB). In theory, both tacit and overt collusion are always incentive compatible in EN while both can be incentive compatible in FPSB if the auction is repeated and bidders are patient enough. We find that the auctions do not differ in subjects’ propensity to collude overtly and in the likelihood that subjects defect from a collusive agreement. Moreover, the average winning bid does not differ between the auctions unless subjects can collude overtly. Under overt collusion, stable cartels buy at a lower price in EN than in FPSB resulting in a lower average winning bid in EN.

Does Relative Grading Help Male Students? Evidence from a Field Experiment in the Classroom

The provision of non-pecuniary incentives in education is a topic that has received much scholarly attention lately. Our paper contributes to this discussion by investigating the effectiveness of grade incentives in increasing student performance. We perform a direct comparison of the two most commonly used grading practices: the absolute (i.e., criterion-referenced) and the relative (i.e., norm-referenced) grading schemes in a large-scale field experiment at a university. We hypothesize that relative grading, by creating a rank-order tournament in the classroom, provides stronger incentives for male students than absolute grading. In the full sample, we find weak support for our hypothesis. Among the more motivated students we find evidence that men indeed score significantly higher on the test when graded on a curve. Female students, irrespective of their motivation, do not increase their scores under relative grading. Since women slightly outperform men under absolute grading, grading on a curve actually narrows the gender gap in performance.

Power and the Privilege of Clarity: An Analysis of Bargaining Power and Information Transmission

We provide a game theoretic analysis of how power shapes the clarity of communication. We analyze information transmission in a cheap talk bargaining game between an informed Sender and an uninformed Receiver. Theoretically, we find that the maximum amount of information that can be transmitted in equilibrium is increasing in the bargaining power of the Sender relative to that of the Receiver. Using the ACDC-selection criterion, which selects a unique most-informative equilibrium, we predict that information transmission is increasing in the Senders relative bargaining power. This prediction is corroborated by an experiment. Finally, we show how partial information transmission can lead to communication failure, and show how and under which conditions a delegation mechanism can solve this problem.

Bidding to Give in the Field: Door-to-Door Fundraisers Had it Right from the Start

This discussion paper resulted in an article in the Journal of Public Economics (2013). Volume 105, pages 72-85. In a door-to-door fundraising field experiment, we study the impact of fundraising mechanisms on charitable giving. We approached about 4500 households, each participating in either an all-pay auction, a lottery, a non-anonymous voluntary contribution mechanism (VCM), or an anonymous VCM. In contrast to the VCMs, households competed for a prize in the all-pay auction and the lottery. Although the all-pay auction is the superior fundraising mechanism both in theory and in the laboratory, it raised the lowest revenue per household in the field. Our experiment reveals two potential explanations for this anomaly. First, participation in the all-pay auction is substantially lower than in the other mechanisms while the average donation for those who contribute is only slightly higher. We explore various explanations for this lower participation and favor one that argues that competition in the all-pay mechanism crowds out intrinsic motivations to contribute. Second, the non-anonymity may have a negative effect: conditional on donating, households contribute less in the non-anonymous VCM than in the anonymous VCM. Among the non-anonymous mechanisms, the lottery raises the largest revenue per household. Notably, the method that scored best, the anonymous VCM, is the one most used by door-to-door fund raisers in the Netherlands.

An Experimental Study of Credible Deviations and ACDC

We test the Average Credible Deviation Criterion (ACDC), a stability measure and refinement for cheap talk equilibria introduced in De Groot Ruiz, Offerman & Onderstal (2011b). ACDC has been shown to be predictive under general conditions and to organize data well in previous experiments meant to test other concepts. This experiment provides the first systematic test of whether and to which degree credible deviations matter for the stability of cheap talk equilibria. Furthermore, it tests ACDC in a new setting. We also introduce a neologism dynamic to explain the main dynamic characteristics of our data. Our main result is that credible deviations matter and matter gradually, as predicted by ACDC. In addition, our data support the predictions of ACDC in settings where existing concepts are silent. Finally, we test the prediction derived in De Groot Ruiz, Offerman & Onderstal (2011a) about bargaining power and information transmission. We find that, as predicted, less information is transmitted as the Sender’s relative power decreases.

Solids: A Combinatorial Auction for Real Estate

In May 2011, our collaboration with housing corporation Stadgenoot culminated in the first combinatorial auction for housing space in a newly erected multistory building in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Our primary goal was to allocate space based on the preferences of many potential users. The resulting allocation included space for restaurants, boutiques, a dentist, and residential users. The auction we designed maximized total rent for Stadgenoot while complying with municipal and building regulations. We based our design on laboratory experiments that gave us guidance on choices regarding, for example, pricing, feedback, and activity rules. This paper describes the development and the results of this auction.

Self-selection and the power of incentive schemes: an experimental study

We examine how self-selection of workers depends on the power of incentive schemes and how it affects team performance if the power of the incentive schemes is increased. In a laboratory experiment, we let subjects choose between (low-powered) team incentives and (high-powered) individual incentives. We observe that subjects exhibiting high trust or reciprocity in the trust game are more likely to choose team incentives. When exposed to individual incentives, subjects who chose team incentives perform worse if both the unobservable interdependency between their efforts and their incentive to cooperate under team incentives are high.

Equilibrium selection in experimental cheap talk games

In the past, many refinements have been proposed to select equilibria in cheap talk games. Usually, these refinements were motivated by a discussion of how rational agents would reason in some particular cheap talk games. In this paper, we propose a new refinement and stability measure that is intended to predict actual behavior in a wide range of cheap talk games. According to our Average Credible Deviation Criterion (ACDC), the stability of an equilibrium is determined by the frequency and size of credible deviations. ACDC organizes the results from several cheap talk experiments in which behavior converges to equilibrium, even in cases where other criteria do not make a prediction.