Testing Distributional Dependence in the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak ...

After submitting their responses for the Holt-Laury task, the resolution procedures were
explained on screen (see Figure A.4 of Appendix A). Although it would have been
straightforward to automate the resolution of the various randomizations to determine the
subjects' respective payoffs, to ensure the credibility of the randomizations each subject in turn—
and in private—rolled seven unique dice simultaneously: one 20-sided die to determine which
stage in the BDM phase was resolved, three 10-sided dice to yield a three-digit decimal number
which determined the random price based on the relevant distribution for that stage, one 10-
sided die to determine which row of the Holt-Laury procedure was played, and two 10-sided dice
to determine the outcome of the lottery chosen by the subject in the randomly selected row of
the Holt-Laury procedure. 22
Following the payoff resolution, the subjects completed a ten-question survey on
SurveyMonkey, which included (among others) questions about their valuations for the item
before and after the experiment, how they came to make their decisions, and the clarity of the
instructions. 23
4 Descriptive Statistics and Results
Three sessions were conducted in the Xlab in February and March of 2011 with a total of 69
subjects. Each session lasted slightly less than one hour. The average monetary payment was
$15.86, and 22 (i.e., 31.9%) of the 69 subjects also received the item in addition to the monetary
payment (see Table 2).
22 While any of the lotteries in the Holt-Laury procedure could have been resolved with one ten-sided die, two tensided
dice were used to make that part of the randomization more intuitive for the subjects given that the
probabilities of the lotteries had been expressed in percentages.
23 See the end of Appendix A for a full list of the survey questions.
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