%0 Report
        %A Rutledge, Robert
%A Alladi, Vinayak
%A Cheung, Stephen L.
        %T Price Expectations and Reference-Dependent Preferences
        %D 2022
        %8 2022 Jun
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 15375
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp15375
        %X We experimentally test Kőszegi and Rabin's (2006, 2007) theory of reference-dependent preferences in the context of price expectations. In an incentivised valuation task, participants are endowed with a mug and provide their willingness to accept (WTA) to sell it. We manipulate the sale price in a separate, exogenous forced sale scenario, which is predicted to produce a 'comparison effect', moving WTA in the opposite direction to the forced sale price. Consistent with the theory, we observe a treatment effect of between AUD $0.79 and $2.06 in the hypothesised direction; however, it is statistically insignificant. We also elicit participants' loss aversion to account for heterogeneity in the theorised effect; however, controlling for the interaction between our treatment and loss aversion does not consistently strengthen our result.
        %K comparison effect
%K price expectations
%K reference dependence
%K loss aversion