How Basic are Behavioral Biases? Evidence from Capuchin Monkey Trading Behavior (2006)
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| Venue: | Journal of Political Economy |
| Citations: | 63 - 3 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Chen06howbasic,
author = {M. Keith Chen and Venkat Lakshminarayanan and Laurie R. Santos},
title = {How Basic are Behavioral Biases? Evidence from Capuchin Monkey Trading Behavior},
journal = {Journal of Political Economy},
year = {2006},
pages = {517--537}
}
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Abstract
Behavioral economics has demonstrated systematic decision-making biases in both lab and field data. Do these biases extend across contexts, cultures, or even species? We investigate this question by introducing fiat currency and trade to a colony of capuchin monkeys, and recovering their preferences over a range of goods and gambles. We show that capuchins react rationally to both price and wealth shocks, but display several hallmark biases when faced with gambles, including reference-dependence and loss-aversion. Given our capuchins ’ inexperience with trade and gambles, these results suggest that loss-aversion extends beyond humans, and may be innate rather than learned. ∗We would like to acknowledge financial support from Whitebox Advisors and the Russell Sage Founda-tion, without which this research would not have been possible. Alisia Eckert provided invaluable research assistance throughout this project. Many people gave generously of their time on this and earlier drafts; we
Keyphrases
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