Endowment Effects within Corporate Agency Relationships
实验检验了典型企业代理关系中是否存在禀赋效应，发现代理人未表现出显著禀赋效应，可能因框架效应使其将权利视为交换价值。
Behavioral economics is an increasingly prominent field within corporate law scholarship. A particularly noteworthy behavioral bias is the “endowment effect”—the observed differential between an individual's willingness to pay to obtain an entitlement and her willingness to accept to part with one. Should endowment effects pervade corporate contexts, they would significantly complicate much common wisdom within business law, such as the presumed optimality of ex ante agreements. Existing research, however, does not adequately address the extent to which people manifest endowment effects within agency relationships. This article presents an experimental test for endowment effects for subjects situated in an agency relationship that typifies many firms. We find that subjects do not exhibit significant endowment effects. An additional experimental test suggests that this finding may be largely due to framing: subjects situated as “agents” may view entitlements principally in terms of exchange value, thereby dampening endowment.