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The Impact of Financial Histories on Individuals and Societies: A Replication of and Extension of Berg et al. (1995)

Xu Jiang
Radhika Lunawat
Brian Shapiro

Replication in Experimental Economics

ISBN: 978-1-78560-351-8, eISBN: 978-1-78560-350-1

ISSN: 0193-2306

Publication date: 13 October 2015

Abstract

We replicate and extend the social history treatment of the Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe (1995) investment game, to further document how the reporting of financial history influences how laboratory societies organize themselves over time. We replicate Berg et al. (1995) by conducting a No History and a Financial History session to determine whether a report summarizing the financial transactions of a previous experimental session will significantly reduce entropy in the amounts sent by Investors and returned by Stewards in the investment game, as Berg et al. (1995) found. We extend Berg et al. (1995) in two ways. First, we conduct a total of five sessions (one No History and four Financial History sessions). Second, we introduce Shannon’s (1948) measure of entropy from information theory to assess whether the introduction of financial transaction history reduces the amount of dispersion in the amounts invested and returned across generations of players. Results across sessions indicate that entropy declined in both the amounts sent by Investors and the percentage returned by Stewards, but these patterns are weaker and mixed compared to those in the Berg et al. (1995) study. Additional research is needed to test how initial conditions, path dependencies, actors’ strategic reasoning about others’ behavior, multiple sessions, and communication may mediate the impact of financial history. The study’s multiple successive Financial History sessions and entropy measure are new to the investment game literature.

Keywords

  • Trust
  • Investment
  • Return
  • Financial history
  • Societal organization
  • Entropy
  • C92
  • C65
  • D80
  • D02

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Cary Deck (co-editor) and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments and suggestions, and thank John Dickhaut and Judy Rayburn for their ideas, inspiration, and encouragement in the early stages of this research. Research funding from the Merage School of Business (University of California – Irvine), the Department of Accounting at the Carlson School of Management (University of Minnesota – Twin Cities), and the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business is gratefully acknowledged.

Citation

Jiang, X., Lunawat, R. and Shapiro, B. (2015), "The Impact of Financial Histories on Individuals and Societies: A Replication of and Extension of Berg et al. (1995)", Replication in Experimental Economics (Research in Experimental Economics, Vol. 18), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 95-135. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0193-230620150000018004

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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