Proceedings

5.2. Anchoring bias
You bought two years ago A companies’ stocks with 5 RON and now their price is
8 RON. A couple of month ago the price reached a record level of 15 RON caused by
the announcement of high past profits. You thought to sell the stocks but you haven’t
done it. The price dropped at 15 RON after the managers were accused by fraud.
What would you chose from the following choices?
• keep the shares hoping that the price will increase again at the previous level
because now you are feeling that you would lose 7 (15-8) RON if you would
sell them
• sell the shares because this increase had a conjectural reason.
Assume that you would have to sell your current house from the outskirts in order to
buy another one located in the centre of the city. You still hesitate regarding your
selling price. Your agent valuated your property at 200.000 euro. This value amazes
you because you have bought the house 15 years ago with 50.000 euro. You have
posted your selling order on market but you did not receive any offer for a couple of
month. One of the days your agents ask you an urgent meeting. He told you that
company A, that was created 8 years ago have bankrupt and 2.500 people remained
unemployed. Your agent and his co-workers concluded that this bankruptcy made the
real market to drop 10%. Your agent told you that you have to revaluate your selling
price taking into consideration this new information. You are telling him that you will
consider it and you will tell him the results. What is more probable for you to choose?
• decide to keep the initial price
• decide to reduce the price with 5%
• decide to reduce the price with 10%
• decide to reduce the price to 150.000 because you want to be sure that you will
sell it.
5.3. Illusion of control
Do you consider yourself able to better control the game output if you throw the dice
when you play games like Monopoly, dice, etc?
• yes, seems that I am in control
• no, this does not matter for me
If you buy a lottery ticket are you more confident when you are choosing the numbers
comparing with a randomly selected numbers?
• yes, it seems more probable to win if I am choosing the numbers
• no, this does not matter for me.
5.4. Framing bias
(In this case the susceptibility of this error is verified if the respondent chose different
answers to the two parts)
a. Assume that you prepare to retirement. You need 50.000 RON per year to live
comfortably but you could live with 40.000 RON and you could survive in the
extremis with 30.000 RON. In the second step, assume that there is no
inflation. Now you have to choose among two hypothetical investments. First
choice will secure you 40.000 RON/year without risk and the second one will
bring 50.000 (50% chance) or 30.000 (50% chance). What would you chose?
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