Exploring the meaning of significance in experimental economics

Null Hypothesis Significance Testing has been widely used in the experimental economics literature. Typically, attention is restricted to type-I-errors. We demonstrate that not taking type-II errors into account is problematic. We also provide evidence, for one prominent area in experimental economi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhang, Lyla, Ortmann, A.
Format: Working Paper
Published: University of New South Wales 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/62344
Description
Summary:Null Hypothesis Significance Testing has been widely used in the experimental economics literature. Typically, attention is restricted to type-I-errors. We demonstrate that not taking type-II errors into account is problematic. We also provide evidence, for one prominent area in experimental economics (dictator game experiments), that most studies are severely underpowered, suggesting that their findings are questionable. We then illustrate with several examples how poor (no) power planning can lead to questionable results.