Pyramid schemes
通过实验发现，超过一半的参与者会投资预期收益为负的金字塔骗局，风险容忍度是共同预测因素，而认知能力和对正偏态风险的偏好仅在美国样本中起作用。
We invite experiment participants to invest their endowment in a pyramid scheme with a negative expected return. In two samples, one from the general U.S. population and one from a major German university involving higher stakes, more than half invest regardless of their age, gender, income, and trust and fairness beliefs. Higher risk tolerance positively correlates with investment in both populations, whereas preference for positively-skewed risk, and lower cognitive skills explain investment only in the general U.S. population. We vary the level of assistance provided to participants in inferring the distribution of payoff from the pyramid scheme in four treatments, and find that only those requiring no further extrapolation of information are successful in reducing investment.