We study auctions under different entry rules. Existing evidence about common value auctions points toward a severe overbidding phenomenon (winner’s curse) and high bankruptcy rate. In an experiment, we show that voluntary entry makes winner’s curse bids and bankruptcies more frequent, compared to a treatment with random assignment to the auctions. Instead, bankruptcy rates decrease when bidder...

I argue that if citizens systematically underestimate what their government can and should do for them, then they will hold politicians to a lower standard and sanction poor performers less often. A large-scale experiment across 95 localities in Mali in which some voters received information about potential government performance identifies effects of raising voter expectations. Survey experime...

To provide a measure of the Big Five for contexts in which participant time is severely limited, we abbreviated the Big Five Inventory (BFI-44) to a 10-item version, the BFI-10. To permit its use in cross-cultural research, the BFI-10 was developed simultaneously in several samples in both English and German. Results focus on the psychometric characteristics of the 2-item scales on the BFI-10, ...

Security and privacy researchers are increasingly conducting controlled experiments focusing on IT professionals, such as software developers and system administrators. These professionals are typically more difficult to recruit than general end-users. In order to allow for distributed recruitment of IT professionals for security user studies, we designed Developer Observatory, a browser-based ...

Participants played a modified prisoner’s dilemma game in which competition was created using a single player. The competition was between the player at the moment and the player in the future. The complexity of the game was increased across experiments. The transition from Experiment 1a to 1b saw the removal of information about future consequences and past behavior. Experiment 2 removed infor...

b Background: An unprecedented amount of data from a variety of disciplines containing variables of interest to nursing are available to nurse researchers. In response, the use of large data sets is emerging as a legitimate method that can help facilitate the translation of knowledge to practice. b Objective: To explore the spectrum of methodological issues and practical applications encountere...

Purpose of this paper The paper provides a better understanding of the interrelatedness of customer and service orientations in the organizational structures of capital goods manufacturing companies. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative, multi-case research design was employed using 36 European capital goods manufacturing companies. Findings This article explored four different patterns of...

Should students be used as experimental subjects in software engineering? Given that students are in many cases readily available and cheap it is no surprise that the vast majority of controlled experiments in software engineering use them. But they can be argued to constitute a convenience sample that may not represent the target population (typically “real” developers), especially in terms of...

Empirical studies in software engineering are often used to gain insight into new techniques and methods. However, due mainly to concerns of external validity, questions have been raised as to the value of these types of studies. In this paper, we discuss lessons learned from conducting a large number of empirical studies in university courses in three different countries (Italy, Norway and the...

We examine the generalizability of internally valid estimates of causal effects in a fixed population over time when that population is subject to aggregate shocks. This temporal external validity is shown to depend upon the distribution of the aggregate shocks and the interaction between these shocks and the casual effects. We show that returns to investment in agriculture, small and medium en...