Exploring the Meaning of Significance in Experimental Economics

Andreas Ortman () and Le Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Andreas Ortman: School of Economics, Australian School of Business, the University of New South Wales
Le Zhang: School of Banking and Finance, Australian School of Business, the University of New South Wales

No 2013-32, Discussion Papers from School of Economics, The University of New South Wales

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Null Hypothesis Significance Testing; Type-I-errors; Type-II errors; Significance level; Statistical power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A10 B23 C12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2013-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-ecm and nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
http://research.economics.unsw.edu.au/RePEc/papers/2013-32.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:swe:wpaper:2013-32

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from School of Economics, The University of New South Wales Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hongyi Li ().