Lukas Meub

Georg-August-Universität Göttingen | GAUG · Department of Economics

Economic small group research points to groups as more rational decision-makers in numerous economic situations. However, no attempts have been made to investigate whether groups are affected similarly by behavioral biases that are pervasive for individuals. If groups were also able to more effectively avoid these biases, the relevance of biases in...

The performance of groups has been thoroughly investigated in experimental economics, showing that groups are overall more rational deciders than individuals. However, while superior group performance in economic experiments has primarily been shown for face-to-face decision making, this has ceased to be the prevalent form of communication in many...

In this paper we contribute to the discussion on whether intellectual property rights foster or hinder innovation by means of a laboratory experiment. We introduce a novel Scrabble-like word-creation task that captures most essentialities of a sequential innovation process. We use this task to investigate the effects of intellectual property allowi...

The overconfidence bias is discussed extensively in economic studies, yet fails to hold experimentally once monetary incentives and feedback are implemented. We consider overconfidence as a social bias. For a simple real effort task, we show that, individually, economic conditions effectively prevent overconfidence. By contrast, the introduction of...

In markets for expert services, consumers suffer from a problem and rely on diagnosis and treatment by better informed experts. Consumers anticipate that experts might engage in fraudulent behavior and abstain from entering the market. We experimentally investigate whether improved consumer knowledge alleviates such market inefficiencies. Consumers...

Recent advances in machine learning have led to the widespread adoption of ML models for decision support systems. However, little is known about how the introduction of such systems affects the behavior of human stakeholders. This pertains both to the people using the system, as well as those who are affected by its decisions. To address this know...

Recent advances in machine learning have led to the widespread adoption of ML models for decision support systems. However, little is known about how the introduction of such systems affects the behavior of human stakehold-ers. This pertains both to the people using the system, as well as those who are affected by its decisions. To address this kno...

Der Modellversuch zum Handel mit Flächenzertifikaten prüfte realitätsnah, ob handelbare Flächenzertifikate ein Instrument sein können, um den Städten und Gemeinden dabei zu helfen, den Flächenverbrauch zu vermindern und die Innenentwicklung zu stärken. Der Modelversuch wurde mit 87 Kommunen aus ganz Deutschland durchgeführt. Er bestand aus zwei zen...

Today algorithmic decision-making (ADM) is prevalent in several fields including medicine, the criminal justice system, financial markets etc. On the one hand, this is testament to the ever improving performance and capabilities of complex machine learning models. On the other hand, the increased complexity has resulted in a lack of transparency an...

Tradable development rights (TDR) are considered by scholars and regulators in various countries as a means of reducing land consumption efficiently. Similar to the development of CO2-certificate trading schemes, the methodology of experimental economics can be used to derive empirical evidence on the core parameters and problems of TDR schemes, th...

Tradable development rights (TDR) are discussed as a mechanism to reduce land consumption while ensuring an efficient implementation of profitable building projects. We present a novel laboratory experiment on the feasibility of TDR and simulate the acquisition and trading of development rights. In particular, we investigate the effects of uncertai...

Tradable development rights (TDR) are discussed as a means of containing urban sprawl in numerous countries. Introducing a novel experimental setting, we simulate a cap & trade TDR scheme and investigate the effects of communication, specifically among competing market participants and within teams of decision-makers. Communication reduces auction...

We experimentally investigate social learning in a two-agent prediction game with both exogenous and endogenous ordering of decisions on a continuous action space. We are first in comparing exogenous and endogenous ordering within one framework, which enables a direct comparison of both structures in terms of informational efficiency, strategic del...

Economic research on innovation has long discussed which policy instruments best foster innovativeness in individuals and organizations. One of the instruments easily accessible to policy-makers is innovation contests; however, there is ambiguous empirical evidence concerning how such contests should be designed. Our experimental study provides evi...

Zusammenfassung Die Einführung handelbarer Flächenzertifikate wird als Regulierungsinstrument zur Reduktion des Flächenverbrauchs in Deutschland diskutiert. Bislang fehlen jedoch empirische Studien zur Untersuchung der Wohlfahrts- und Umverteilungswirkung eines solchen cap & trade Systems. Insbesondere die Frage nach der Effizienz verschiedener Mec...

Certificate trading schemes have been discussed as a cost-efficient means of reducing urban land consumption in Germany by capping and reallocating permissions to conduct building projects. However, in contrast to the established cap & trade systems for emissions, reputation-seeking politicians would be in charge of buying and trading certificates...

Biased forecasts, particularly the inadequate adjustment from current values and excessive clustering, are increasingly explained as resulting from anchoring. However, experiments presented in support of this interpretation lack economic conditions, particularly monetary incentives, feedback for learning effects and an optimal strategy of unbiased...

Die Flächeninanspruchnahme liegt im Vierjahresdurchschnitt der Jahre 2011 bis 2014 mit 69 Hektar pro Tag immer noch mehr als doppelt so hoch wie von der Bundesregierung vor 14 Jahren in der nationalen Nachhaltigkeitsstrategie festgelegt. Vor dem Hintergrund des 30-Hektar-Zieles hat die Bundesregierung in den Koalitionsverträgen der 17. und 18. Legi...

The German government has committed to substantially limiting future land consumption. Among the most prominently discussed policy instruments is the implementation of a cap & trade system for land consumption, in which a limited amount of certificates is allocated to and traded by municipalities. Since these certificates would be a prerequisite fo...

In an experiment on moral cleansing with an endogenously manipulated moral self-image, we examine the role of the addressee of an immoral action. We find that cheating is highest and moral cleansing lowest when subjects cheat at the expense of the experimenter, while cheating is lowest and moral cleansing highest once cheating harms another partici...

Tradable development rights (TDR) are discussed as a means of containing urban sprawl in numerous countries. Despite its theoretical superiority in ensuring an efficient redistribution of planning rights, its applicability is concerned with several open questions and potential problems. Introducing a novel experimental setting, we simulate a cap &...

Markets for expert services are characterized by information asymmetries between experts and consumers. Consumers suffer from either a minor or serious problem and only experts can infer the appropriate treatment. We analyze both the effects on consumer entry decision and expert cheating behavior conditional on consumer information. Consumer inform...

We develop a two-period generalized beauty contest to study the optimal level of publicity when disclosed information is subject to multiplier effects. We build upon the static case, where all agents receive a private signal about an unknown fundamental state and only a fraction of all agents receive an additional public signal. However, in our mod...

While reputational herding has been shown to contribute to poor economic forecasting, the underlying behavioral mechanisms have not yet been empirically investigated. We run a forecasting experiment with contradictory incentives for accuracy and coordination, finding subjects’ forecasts to be inaccurate and driven by the coordination motive. Coordi...

The anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic has been studied in numerous experimental settings and is increasingly drawn upon to explain systematically biased decisions in economic areas as diverse as auctions, real estate pricing, sports betting and forecasting. In these cases, anchors result from publicly observable and aggregated decisions of other m...

In this paper we contribute to the discussion on whether intellectual property rights foster or hinder innovation by means of a laboratory experiment. We introduce a novel Scrabble-like creativity task that captures most essentialities of a sequential innovation process. We use this task to investigate the effects of intellectual property allowing...

Economic research on innovation has long discussed which policy instruments best foster innovativeness in individuals and organizations. One of the instruments easily accessible to policy-makers is innovation contests; however, there is ambiguous empirical evidence concerning how such contests should be designed. Our experimental study provides evi...

The anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic has been studied in numerous experimental settings and is increasingly drawn upon to explain systematically biased decisions in economic areas as diverse as auctions, real estate pricing, sports betting and forecasting. In these cases, anchors result from publicly observable and aggregated decisions of other m...

Reputational herding has been considered as a driving force behind economic and financial forecasts clustered around consensus values. Strategic coordination can consequently explain poor performances of prediction markets as resulting from the distinct incentives that forecasters face. While this notion has been considered theoretically and empiri...

Economic small group research points to groups as more rational decision-makers in numerous economic situations. However, no attempts have been made to investigate whether groups are affected similarly by behavioral biases that are pervasive for individuals. If groups were also able to more effectively avoid these biases, the relevance of biases in...

The performance of groups has been thoroughly investigated in experimental economics, showing that groups are overall more rational deciders than individuals. However, superior group performance in economic experiments has primarily been shown for face-to-face decision making, which has ceased to be the prevalent form of communication in many IT-ba...

Certificate trading schemes have been discussed as a cost-efficient means of reducing land use in Germany by capping and reallocating permissions to conduct building projects. However, in contrast to the established cap & trade systems for emissions, reputation-seeking politicians would be in charge of buying and trading certificates – an aspect no...

Behavioral biases in forecasting, particularly the lack of adjustment from current values and the overall clustering of forecasts, are increasingly explained as resulting from the anchoring heuristic. Nonetheless, the classical anchoring experiments presented in support of this interpretation lack external validity for economic domains, particularl...