PERSUASION BIAS IN SCIENCE: CAN ECONOMICS HELP?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Di Tillio, Alfredo; Ottaviani, Marco; Sorensen, Peter Norman
• 署名单位: Bocconi University; University of Copenhagen
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12515
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: F266-F304
• 关键词: trial; randomization; alternation

摘要

We investigate the impact of conflicts of interests on randomised controlled trials in a game-theoretic framework. A researcher seeks to persuade an evaluator that the causal effect of a treatment outweighs its cost, to justify acceptance. The researcher can use private information to manipulate the experiment in three alternative ways: (i) sampling subjects based on their treatment effect, (ii) assigning subjects to treatment based on their baseline outcome, or (iii) selectively reporting experimental outcomes. The resulting biases have different welfare implications: for sufficiently high acceptance cost, in our binary illustration the evaluator loses in cases (i) and (iii) but benefits in case (ii).