Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

8-2016

Publication Title

IZA Discussion Paper No. 10151

Pages

33

Abstract

This paper analyzes 12,596 wagering decisions of 6,064 contestants in the US game show Jeopardy!, focusing on the anchoring phenomenon in financial decision-making. We find that contestants anchor heavily on the initial dollar value of a clue in their wagering decision, even though there exists no rational reason to do so. More than half of all wagers occur within $500 of the initial dollar value, although the maximum possible wagering value averages $5,914. This anchoring phenomenon remains statistically significant on the one percent level, even after controlling for scores, clue category, time trends, and player-fixed effects.When exploiting within-player variation only and implicitly controlling for a host of individual behavioral attitudes and preferences, raising the anchoring amount by 10 percent translates to an increase of 3.1 percent in the wager. In terms of magnitude, anchoring is marginally more pronounced for women with an elasticity of 0.34 versus 0.28 for males. Finally, this paper is among the first to investigate anchoring among children and teenagers. We find little evidence for anchoring among children under the age of 13, but the effect begins to emerge for teenagers and further manifests itself among college students. Overall, our findings suggest anchoring plays a substantial role in financial decision-making under pressure.

Comments

Published in final edited form as:

Jetter, M., & Walker, J. K. (2017). Anchoring in financial decision-making: Evidence from Jeopardy!. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 141, 164-176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2017.07.006

Original Publication Citation

Jetter, Michael and Walker, Jay K., Anchoring in financial decision-making: Evidence from the field. IZA Discussion Paper No. 10151. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2826985

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