Geoffrey Castillo
Senior research fellow
Behavioural Economics Analysis and Research (BEAR) group, Nottingham Trent University
Publications
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Continuous Inclusion of Other in the Self
Journal of the Economic Science Association 2024
with Benjamin BeranekThe Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) scale is a popular tool to measure interpersonal closeness that is increasingly being used in economics. We develop and validate a continuous version of the IOS scale. This Continuous IOS scale gives a finer measure and addresses the reluctance of subjects to report low scores on the standard IOS scale. We also propose a version of the standard IOS scale that meets its original design features. Our IOS scales are easy-to-use, well-documented, standardised, and available at https://github.com/geoffreycastillo/ios-js.
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Are groups always more dishonest than individuals? The case of salient negative externalities
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 2022
with Lawrence Choo and Veronika GrimmA common finding of the literature on dishonesty is that groups are more dishonest than individuals. We revisit this finding by replacing the experimenter, implicitly hurt by subjects’ dishonesty, with an explicit third-party: a local charity. With the charity we do not find groups to be more dishonest than individuals. Instead, groups can even help moderate the extent of the dishonesty.
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Preference reversals with social distances
Journal of Economic Psychology 2021Preference reversals between choice and valuation are typically studied with probabilities or with time delays. I extend them to social distances and document their existence in this new domain.
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The attraction effect and its explanations
Games and Economic Behavior 2020The attraction effect violates choice consistency, one of the central assumptions of economics. I present a risky choice experiment to test it and disentangle some of its explanations. I find the attraction effect, but in a smaller magnitude than previously thought. I uncover a ‘range effect’ that shows that people weight more attributes whose range increases. I also show that the aggregate results hide considerable heterogeneity between subjects.
Working papers
- Similarity and social discounting: Heterogeneity in preferences for social distance, with Benjamin Beranek.
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A large literature suggests that people are more altruistic towards socially close others. We revisit this finding in an experiment using a continuous measure of social distance—interpersonal similarity—and a structural model of preferences for social distance—social discounting. In line with the literature, we find that most people prefer socially close others. Our estimates imply that subjects would forgo up to $0.18 of a dollar to have it redirected from a socially distant other to themselves. This rises to $0.57 when taking self bias into account. However, we also find that about a third of subjects are more altruistic towards those who are socially farther and that preferences for social distance are not necessarily monotone.
- The Virtual Bingo Blower: An open-source tool to generate ambiguity and risk in experiments, with Ola Andersson and Erik Wengström.
This paper introduces the Virtual Bingo Blower (VBB), an open-source tool to generate risk and ambiguity in computerized experiments. Using a physics engine—a computer simulation of a physical system—the VBB simulates a conventional bingo blower. Different aspects of the VBB, such as the number of balls, their colour, and their speed, can be easily modified. In an online experiment, we measure ambiguity attitudes and vary the source of ambiguity, using either the VBB or natural events. We find that the VBB and natural events result in a similar degree of ambiguity aversion. Further, we find that, by manipulating the number of balls, the VBB can be used to manipulate the perceived level of ambiguity.
- How does the way we represent lotteries affect risk preferences?, with Chris Starmer.
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In a risk preference elicitation experiment, we manipulate the way we represent lotteries. We represent probabilities, payoffs, or both at the same time. We find that the representation has no effect on the raw, elicited certainty equivalents. We find, however, a significant effect on the structural parameters estimated via maximum likelihood.
- Do different people report the same social norms?, with Lawrence Choo and Veronika Grimm.
- [pdf]
If the Krupka-Weber (2013) norm-elicitation task captures pre-existing social norms, then the elicited norms should be independent of one’s role in a game or one’s social preferences. We test this idea in a complex game that features rich interactions. We find that different people, even when they have conflicting incentives, report the same social norms. Our results further validate the use of the Krupka-Weber task to measure social norms.
In progress
- Context effects under ambiguity, with Ola Andersson and Erik Wengström.
- On the endogeneity between stock market prices and bank runs, with Lawrence Choo and Todd Kaplan.
- The effect of asymmetry on repeated prisoner's dilemmas, with Wieland Müller and Julian Polzin.
Tools
bingo-blower.js, a virtual bingo-blower for ambiguity experimentsios.js, a continuous implementation of the Inclusion of Other in the Self scalelottery-representation.js, a library for representing lotteries in experiments