How Basic Are Behavioral Biases? Evidence from Capuchin Monkey Trading Behavior

Keith Chen, Venkat Lakshminarayanan and Laurie R. Santos

Journal of Political Economy, 2006, vol. 114, issue 3, 517-537

Abstract: Behavioral economics has demonstrated systematic decision-making biases in both lab and field data. Do these biases extend across contexts, cultures, or even species? We investigate this question by introducing fiat currency and trade to a colony of capuchin monkeys and recovering their preferences over a range of goods and gambles. We show that capuchins react rationally to both price and wealth shocks but display several hallmark biases when faced with gambles, including reference dependence and loss aversion. Given our capuchins' inexperience with money and trade, these results suggest that loss aversion extends beyond humans and may be innate rather than learned.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (72)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/503550 main text (application/pdf)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:jpolec:v:114:y:2006:i:3:p:517-537

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().