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Morals in Multi-Unit Markets

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We examine how the erosion of morals, norms, and norm compliance in markets depends on the market power of individual traders. Previously studied markets allow traders to exchange at most one unit and provide market power to individual traders by de-activating two forces: (i) the replacement logic, whereby immoral trading is justified by the belief that others would trade otherwise and (ii) market selection, by which the least moral trader determines aggregate quantities. In an experiment, we compare single-unit to (more common) multi-unit markets, which may activate these forces. Multi-unit markets, in contrast to single-unit markets, lead to a complete erosion of morals. This is associated primarily with a deterioration in norm compliance: the observed level of immoral trade is in contrast with the prevailing social norm. The replacement logic is the main mechanism driving this finding.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2225-2260
Number of pages36
JournalJournal of the European Economic Association
Volume22
Issue number5
Early online date11 Jan 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2024

Funding

We thank the editor Imran Rasul, the anonymous referees, and Bj\u00F6rn Bartling, Sourav Bhattacharya, Katharina Br\u00FCtt, Guillaume Fr\u00E9chette, Jana Friedrichsen, Hartmut Kliemt, Boris van Leeuwen, Klaus M. Schmidt, Florian H. Schneider, Nora Szech, Jeroen van de Ven, Jo\u00EBl van der Weele and seminar and conference audiences at the CREED-ESE meeting, TI Workshop on Communication in Mar- kets and Organizations, EEA Virtual 2020, 2020 ESA Global, Virtual Market Design Seminar, M-BEES 2021, Spring Meeting of Young Economists 2021, TIBER 2021, ESEM 2021, New Trends in Decision- Making: Judgement and Reasoning, ECORES Summer School 2022, 6th Solomon Lew Conference on Behavioral Economics, ACBC workshop on morals and repugnance in markets, MPI-CREED workshop 2023, ESA World 2023, CERGE-EI Prague, CeDEx Nottingham, and GATE Lyon and Tilburg University for helpful suggestions and comments. Financial support from the Research Priority Area Behavioral Economics of the University of Amsterdam is gratefully acknowledged. This experiment is preregistered with RCT ID AEARCTR-0004603, RCT ID AEARCTR-0008306, and RCT ID AEARCTR-0011080.

FundersFunder number
6th Solomon Lew Conference
TI Workshop on Communication in Mar
European Space Agency
Universiteit van AmsterdamAEARCTR-0004603, AEARCTR-0011080, AEARCTR-0008306

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