Lunzheng Li

About

I am a postdoctoral fellow at SInnoPSis and Economics Research Centre, University of Cyprus.

The ERA Chair in Science and Innovation Policy & Studies (SInnoPSis) aims to bring together excellent academics from the linked scientific departments and consolidate all related research activities at the University of Cyprus.

Research

Publications

• "Anchoring in Economics: A Meta-Analysis of Studies on Willingness-To-Pay and Willingness-To- Accept." Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2021.
  with Z. Maniadis and C. Sedikides
  Abstract (click to expand) Anchoring is considered one of the most robust psychological phenomena in judgment and decision-making. Earlier studies produced strong and consistent evidence that anchoring is relevant for the elicitation of economic preferences, but subsequent studies found weaker and less consistent effects. We examined the economic significance of numerical anchoring by conducting a meta-analysis of 53 studies. We used the Pearson correlation coefficient between the anchor number and target response (in our case, Willingness-to-Pay and Willingness-to-Accept) as the primary effect size. Both fixed-effects and random effects models pointed to a moderate overall effect, smaller than the effects reported in early studies. Given some well-known limitations of our meta-analytic methodology, these results should be viewed with caution and the effect size as an upper bound. Also, metaregression analysis indicates that non-random anchors and non-laboratory experiments were associated with higher anchoring effects, whereas selling tasks and anchors incompatible with the evaluated item were associated with lower (but often non-significant) anchoring effects. The use of financial incentives did not have a discernible effect.
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• "Can Biased Polls Distort Electoral Results? Evidence from the Lab." European Journal of Political Economy, accepted.
  with A. Boukouras, W. Jennings and Z. Maniadis
  Abstract (click to expand) We introduce a new methodological approach for studying the effect of biased polls on election outcomes and apply it to a set of new experiments with 375 participants. Voters may observe and learn about the bias by playing multiple voting rounds. While in control conditions, polls are unbiased, in treatment conditions, participants view only poll results where a particular candidate’s vote share is the largest. This candidate is consistently elected more often in the treatments than in the controls, because biased polls robustly distort voters’ expectations about vote shares. This effect holds after eighteen election rounds, out of which the first three are practice rounds, but somewhat more weakly in our main treatment where voters are explicitly informed about the bias.
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  Online Appendix

Working Papers

• "The Account of Instability of Risk Preference: Salience Theory versus Cumulative Prospect Theory."
  Abstract (click to expand) Salience theory is a powerful alternative to prospect theory in accounting for paradoxes of choice under risk. In risk choice settings where the majority of subjects exhibits unstable risk attitudes, we experimentally investigate the descriptive and predictive power of salience theory, and compare it with cumulative prospect theory. We find that both theories unsurprisingly outperform expected utility theory, which does not account for the instability of risk preferences and cumulative prospect theory outperforms salience theory by an insignificant margin. We attribute this small gap to the unsophisticated specification of the salience function and the substantial heterogeneity of the local thinking parameter. Salience theory captures important features of unstable risk preferences, yet further work on the functional representation of the theory is necessary to make it as applicable as cumulative prospect theory.
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• "Childbearing Age and Gender Discrimination in Hiring Decisions: A Large-scale Field Experiment." Under Review.
  with K. Li, W. Si and Z. Xu
  Abstract (click to expand) We conduct a large-scale field experiment in China to investigate the effect of being of childbearing age on gender discrimination in the labor market. We send 35,713 fictitious resumes to real job postings on a major Chinese online recruitment platform for jobs in four leading cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, which vary in the length of maternity leave. We send applications for positions advertised in the male-dominated field of information technology (IT), the female-dominated field of accounting (ACC), and the mixed-gender field of human resources (HR). We systematically vary the age and gender of the job applicants and record callbacks for interviews. To accurately mimic the job application process in the Chinese labor market, we do not disclose the applicants’ family status. We find that women of childbearing age are subject to discrimination in the field of IT, a problem that also exists in HR and ACC, particularly in Beijing and Shanghai. There is no obvious discrimination against women of childbearing age in Guangzhou or Shenzhen, where maternity leave is longer. In the aggregate, the evidence indicates that women of childbearing age face statistical discrimination that prevents them from obtaining equal employment opportunities.
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Work in Progress

• "How Do Biases in Opinion Polls Affect Elections in Costly Voting Environments?"
  with A. Boukouras and Z. Maniadis
• "Mind the Nudge: an Experimental Approach to Changing Defaults under Rational Inattention."
  with H. Calvo Pardo and Z. Maniadis
• "Failures in Rational Cascades Formation."

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