Open research questions in Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
79 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 4,249 Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.
What the literature leaves open
There are several potential weaknesses of the current research. For one, as meritoc- racy beliefs were measured rather than manipulated, their potential causal effects can be called into question. Importantly, meritocracy beliefs were measured before par- ticipants viewed and evaluated any information about pay dispersion. Furthermore, we ensured that the effects of meritocracy beliefs were not simply driven by political conservatism, which predicts attitudes towards income inequality (e.g., Norton & Ariely, 2011), by controlling for it in our analyses. In future research, it would be interesting to manipulate meritocracy beliefs to test their causal effects (e.g., Darnon et al., 2018a; 2018b). Similarly, further experiments are needed in which level of equity is independently manipulated to test its causal effects on evaluations of dis- tributive unfairness (Spencer et al., 2005). There are a number of potential issues with our manipulation of pay dispersion. To manipulate levels of pay dispersion, we both increased top pay and decreased bottom pay. Therefore, it is not possible to disentangle whether the effects of our manipulation are due to spread, high top level pay, or low bottom level pay. Future research is needed to disentangle these factors. Furthermore, given our desire to maximize the ecological validity of our manipulation, incremental changes in pay were not symmetrical. In reality, high pay dispersion is mostly caused by exorbitant high pay. Finally, our manipulated levels of pay dispersion all involved some degree of inequality. Previous research suggests that people may prefer low levels of pay dispersion, compared with absolute equality (Kiatpongsan, & Norton, 2014; Kuhn, 2011). Thus, participants may evaluate low levels of pay dispersion more positively than absolute pay equality. Future research could manipulate levels of pay dispersion from none to high with multiple increments to test if the effects of level of pay disper- sion on evaluations of fairness and equity may be curvilinear. Social Justice Research (2026) 39:1–411 3 33 By virtue of collecting data via MTurk, we had large samples and thus both studies were generally well-powered, allowing us to be more confident in the estimates of our effects (Cocks & Togerson, 2013). Our samples were relatively diverse in terms of age, income, ethnicity, and employment, therefore increasing the potential generaliz- ability of our findings to other Americans.3 However, it is unknown whether our find- ings might generalize outside of the United States. Generalizability is more likely for countries that share similar characteristics to the United States in terms of pay disper- sion, as well as meritocracy beliefs, such as other developed, Western nations (Duru- Bellat & Tenret, 2012). However, descriptive meritocracy beliefs may not operate as a system justification belief in contexts where there are weaker assumptions that meritocracy is the status quo (Cichocka & Jost, 2014), such as in some former com- munist, Eastern European countries (Roex et al., 2019). Furthermore, although equity is the dominant distributive justice principle in Western workplaces (Hook & Cook, 1979), this preference appears to be culture-based (Bolino & Turnley, 2008; Conlon et al., 2004; Murphy-Berman & Berman, 2002). Future research is needed to test for cross-cultural differences. In this research, we were interested in public opinions of pay dispersion; however, some might be more interested in how employees evaluate pay dispersion within their own organization. It is possible that the effects of the current research may gen- eralize to employees, as previous research on performance suggests the importance of equity in employees’ reactions to pay dispersion within their organization (Shaw & Gupta, 2007). For instance, employees are more satisfied with their pay to the degree to which they see it as performance based and as not too unequal (Petrescu & Simmons, 2008). Alternatively, the effects of meritocracy beliefs might be weaker, as additional factors would likely come into play for workers, such as their personal level of performance and pay (Trevor & Wazeter, 2006). Future research can inves- tigate these possibilities.
They Work Hard for Their Money…or Do They? The Role of Meritocracy Beliefs on Evaluations of Pay Dispersion · 2026 · DOIWe have proposed a framework for designing fair contracts in SSD games with heterogeneous agents and verified the results empirically. Crucially, we have shown that simple linear fairness-aware contracts are able to induce a cooperative behavior between agents, ensuring the fairness of the entire system, without sacrificing welfare in comparison to the baselines. Limitations. Our experiments are limited to a simple domain, which may not capture the complexi- ties of real-world settings. Additionally, while linear contracts offer simplicity and interpretability, it is not necessarily the case for learned contract policies, which remain difficult to analyze. Future Work. A natural extension of this work involves exploring more expressive contract forms, where payments can be conditioned on richer outcome spaces. While potentially harder to interpret, such contracts may offer greater flexibility and effectiveness in steering the system toward desired outcomes. Another promising direction is to consider deceiving agents who might try to game the contracts offered by the principal, and how such behavior could be counteracted. Finally, it would be interesting to explore how adaptive contracts could be leveraged when the principal’s goal is to allocate wealth according to an arbitrary target distribution rather than ensuring equity.
Taken as a whole, our results imply that future research should consider personal norms when investigating normative prescriptions and their effect on economic behavior. So far, our results on the relation between personal and social norms were limited to their correlations and individual-level differences.
Therefore, we investigated the extent to which implicit associations—which have not been studied in relation to the hypothetical bias—account for the gap between individuals' willingness to pay ( WTP ) in hypothetical and real auctions.
and other countries and to represent stable personality characteristics (McCrae, 2002; McCrae, Costa, Del Pilar, Rolland, & Parker, 1998), the few studies that have compared five-factor measures to behavioral economic games have shown inconsistent findings.
Five-Factor Personality and Cooperative Behavior · 2014These idiosyncratic dimensions of contracting, in which transactions are neither faceless, nor instantaneous (Williamson 1985, 56), expose decision making to the contingent influence of habit, perceived vested interest, and limited knowledge and capacity.
Despite the vast literature, however, the effects of asymmetries between players have not been clarified, except by Harris and Vickers [11] who analyze, in a patent race model, the strategic consequences of asymmetries.
(17, p. 24), McClelland finds that such individuals are more inclined to the extended risk-bearing that is conducive to economic development. McClelland refers to studies showing that middle-class families work for longer-range goals and think of longer time spans than do working- class families.
Kelley (I966) ’Threats and the Development of Co-ordina- tion: Further Studies of the Deutsch and Krauss Trucking Game’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, II9-26.
One factor remains to be considered— that of the probable influence of Beech- er's sermon on the election of 1844. Given the correctness of this analysis, we would have to conclude with Vickrey that the Beecher sermon alone did not account for Clay's defeat.
As for any conclusion of this potential significance, other types of procedures and other species of subjects should be studied before generality can be assumed. Most obviously, generalization effects between the two alleys may have been sufficiently great that evaluation of their independent properties could not be assessed.
The importance of the agenda is partly due to 11However, there is no "actual bargaining range" (in terms of our model) in this postu- lated situation, since the defensive side prefers no agreement to any deterioration of the sta- tus quo, and the offensive side prefers no agreement to an agreement that would merely confirm the status quo. Sham Bargaining Positions may be used when no agreement is desired, but there is an inter- est in pretending that efforts are being made to reach an agreement.
RESULTS FROM the research outlined above could help shed light on one of the questions raised in the introduction to this article: "Is a given management incentive plan paying off?" Similarly, this approach could be used to structure research on other questions related to money and motivation; the efficiency of any compensation device could be studied in this way.
However, little is known about the effectiveness of disclosing only parts of total compensation, such as salary, while excluding other components, such as benefits.
Future research should investigate how these mechanisms operate across diverse domains and populations, develop adaptive approaches that balance performance with worker welfare, and explore governance structures that ensure incentive designs serve both organizational goals and worker well-being.
First, we reconcile conflicting evidence on dual-class ownership and borrowing costs by showing that the effect is inher- ently dynamic and varies across the firm life cycle.
A key open question is whether people engage effortful model-based strategies to the same extent when deciding for themselves versus others, and which computations underpin self-other differences.
Deciding for others diminishes model-based decision-making but depends on individual prosociality · 2026 · DOIThese findings point to the underexplored role of vocal cues in shaping judgement, and they raise important questions for future research in an era of customisable voices generated by artificial intelligence.
Abstract Virtue epistemologists have analyzed individual intellectual virtues such as intellectual humility and perseverance, but intellectual generosity remains relatively under-explored.
On the Complexity and Significance of Intellectual Generosity: Lessons from Sharing with Large Groups · 2026 · DOIApproach Our analytical approach rests on close examination of a puzzling and underrecognized feature of social exchange: people who initiate social exchange routinely deny giving anything of value (“it was nothing”) while the receiver inflates their indebtedness to the giver (“this is too much!”).
It's About Showing Good Faith, Not Avoiding Shows of Weakness: Reworking Leifer's “Local Action” to Build a Robust Theory of Reciprocity · 2023 · DOIHowever, little is known about how decisions regarding the incentive scheme and the mode-choice design jointly affect key outcomes such as response rates, net sample composition, and survey costs.
The interplay of incentives and mode-choice design in self-administered mixed-mode surveys · 2023 · DOIBut can customers be nudged to self‐report information more honestly? This is currently a debate in the literature, where empirical results are inconclusive.
Abstract The Monty Hall game is one of the most discussed decision problems, but where a convincing behavioral explanation of the systematic deviations from probability theory is still lacking.
Monty Hall three door ’anomaly’ revisited: a note on deferment in an extensive form game · 2021 · DOIAbstract Given their widespread application and the benefits provided to marketers, the inconclusive effects of uncertain promotions need to be further explored.
Future research should examine what type of personal information is most likely to be shared as a function of social distance, and whether those participants who choose to share more personal information also are at greater risk for scams targeting personal information.
Most-cited papers in Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Ingroup favoritism in cooperation: A meta-analysis. · Psychological Bulletin · 2014 · 845 citations
- Motives for Private Income Transfers · Journal of Political Economy · 1987 · 697 citations
- Reference Points and Effort Provision · American Economic Review · 2011 · 691 citations
- When eliminating bias isn’t fair: Algorithmic reductionism and procedural justice in human resource decisions · Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · 2020 · 435 citations
- Exit versus Voice · Journal of Political Economy · 2022 · 305 citations
- Distortion and Risk in Optimal Incentive Contracts · The Journal of Human Resources · 2002 · 303 citations
- A snapshot of the frontiers of fairness in machine learning · Communications of the ACM · 2020 · 267 citations
- Understanding Tax Policy: How do People Reason? · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2021 · 265 citations
- Personnel selection as a signaling game. · Journal of Applied Psychology · 2011 · 254 citations
- Expectations as Endowments: Evidence on Reference-Dependent Preferences from Exchange and Valuation Experiments * · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2011 · 250 citations
Most recent work
- Altruistic punishment in action: movement vigour in neuroeconomic choice · Royal Society Open Science · 2026
- Understanding contest skill to reduce the welfare costs of aggression · Biology Letters · 2026
- Deciding for others diminishes model-based decision-making but depends on individual prosociality · npj Science of Learning · 2026
- An experiment on a multi-period beauty contest game · Experimental Economics · 2026
- Receiving Applause “From the Right”: Punishing Freeriding Is Socially Rewarded by Those High in Right-Wing Authoritarianism · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · 2026
- Functional vs. Cross-Functional Teams and the Role of Productive Heterogeneity · Management Science · 2026
- Norm-based enforcement of promises · The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization · 2026
- Moral Regulation in Sequential Decisions · 2026
- Meta-Analysis of Distributional Preferences · The Economic Journal · 2026
- Fair Contracts in Principal-Agent Games with Heterogeneous Types · 2026
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