Payoff dominance vs. cognitive transparency in decision making

This paper reports on three laboratory experiments designed to investigate the roles of decision costs and rewards on the accuracy of economic decisions. The experimental vehicle is a purchase decision employing the Becker-DeGroot-Marshak (BDM) mechanism. The first experiment verifies the incentive-compatibility of the BDM in a pure induced-value setting; the second tests its performance under different information regimes and payoff schedules; the third addresses the role of feedback information. Steep payoff schedules are found to be necessary to optimizing behavior only in cases where subjects must search out an optimal strategy rather than being able to deduce it from information provided.