Theory and Misbehavior of First-Price Auctions: Reply
回应了对第一价格拍卖实验中出现反常行为的批评，指出实验设计可能未满足有效控制条件，导致机会成本极低，从而观察到的反常行为实际上符合理论预期。
Economic theory been under severe attack in recent years. The source of this attack been the observation of apparently robust behavioral in decisions that experimental subjects make in controlled environments. The implication of these observations drawn by some is that many of the fundamental tenets of economic theory are systematically misleading as a descriptive model of human behavior. Many alternative models of individual and group behavior have been proposed which can account for some or all of the apparent anomalies. In the Theory and Misbehavior of FirstPrice Auctions (Harrison, 1989), I argued that the effort to extend or generalize received auction theory as a response to such was misdirected. Specifically, I argued that the observed in the experiments in question may simply reflect the failure of the experiment to meet widely accepted sufficient conditions for a valid controlled experiment proposed by Vernon Smith (1982 pp. 930-9). The result of this failure is simply that the opportunity cost of in these experiments is, by any reasonable standard, minuscule. Observed anomalies may then not be at all: they reflect theoretically consistent behavior under conditions where misbehavior is virtually costless. My critique is quite general in going well beyond auction theory and sealed-bid experiments. Perhaps for this reason there is some truth in the assessment of John D. Hey (1991 p. 195) that it has stirred the passions of the experimental community throughout America. The sad corollary of that assessment, however, is that experimentalists must be a pretty dull lot if such modest concerns as mine stir their passions. Section I restates the payoff-dominance critique in general terms to introduce the nonexperimentalist to the main issues. To address some of the issues raised by my critics, Section II contains a detailed numerical example of an important experimental procedure for eliciting the certainty-equivalent of any lottery that uses the G. M. Becker et al. (1964) procedure. In Section III, the generality of the problem is briefly catalogued, so as to emphasize that this is a debate over much broader methodological matters than sealed-bid auction experiments. Section IV addresses directly some of the specific comments of my critics. Section V identifies a number of qualifications to my critique of existing experimental practice.