Working Papers

The WNE Working Papers series has been published by the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw since 2008.

The WNE Working Papers series provides a fast, open channel for disseminating research conducted at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw. The papers hosted here are working versions (pre-prints) and may evolve as authors refine their analyses, incorporate feedback, or progress through formal peer-review. What you read is the current version released by the authors, timestamped and assigned DOI/ISSN identifiers to ensure precise citation and version tracking. Copyright remains with the authors, who may, at any time, upload a revised file or add a note directing readers to a later, peer-reviewed publication.

The Working Papers series accepts articles by research employees of the Faculty and publications from conferences organised at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw. Articles should be original research papers which have not been previously published, on the subject of economics.

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Number of Results 4

WP(24/2021)372. Stability of the Representativeness Heuristic: Further Evidence from Choices Between Lottery Tickets

Authors: Krawczyk Michał, Rachubik Joanna
The representativeness heuristic (RH) proposes that people expect even a small sample to have similar characteristics to its parent population. One domain in which it appears to operate is the preference for combinations of numbers on lottery tickets…

WP372. Stability of the Representativeness Heuristic: Further Evidence from Choices Between Lottery Tickets

The representativeness heuristic (RH) proposes that people expect even a small sample to have similar characteristics to its parent population. One domain in which it appears to operate is the preference for combinations of numbers on lottery tickets: most players seem to avoid very characteristic, “unrepresentative” combinations, e.g., only containing very low numbers. Likewise, many players may avoid betting on a recently drawn combination because it would seem particularly improbable to be drawn again. We confirm both of these tendencies in a lab experiment and corroborate their external validity in two field experiments. However, we only find a weak link between these two choices: the same people do not necessarily exhibit the two biases. In this sense, there is little consistent manifestation of the RH across different tasks at the individual level. Nevertheless, there are some links related to rationality across the two choices – people who are willing to forgo a monetary payment to get the preferred ticket in one task are also willing to do it in the other. We find such preferences to be related to the misperception of probabilities and providing intuitive, incorrect answers in the Cognitive Reflection Test.


Krawczyk Michał, Rachubik Joanna
Decision making under risk Lottery choice Perception of randomness Number preferences in lotteries Representativeness heuristic

WP(3/2020)309. What do lab experiments tell us about the real world? The case of lotteries with extreme payoffs

Authors: Kachurka Roman, Krawczyk Michał, Rachubik Joanna
In this study, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which the subjects make choices between real-world lottery tickets typically purchased by lottery customers. In this way, we are able to reliably offer extremely high potential payoffs, something r…

WP309. What do lab experiments tell us about the real world? The case of lotteries with extreme payoffs

In this study, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which the subjects make choices between real-world lottery tickets typically purchased by lottery customers. In this way, we are able to reliably offer extremely high potential payoffs, something rarely possible in economic experiments. In a between-subject design, we separately manipulate a number of features that distinguish the situation faced by the customers in the field and by subjects in typical laboratory experiments. We also have the unique opportunity to compare our data to actual sales data provided by the operator of the lottery. Overall, we find the distributions to be highly similar (meaning high external validity of the laboratory experiment). The only manipulation that makes a major difference is that when the probabilities of winning specific amounts are explicitly provided (which is not the case in the field), choices shift towards options with lower payoff variance. We also find that standard laboratory measures of risk posture fail to explain our subjects' behavior in the main task.


Kachurka Roman, Krawczyk Michał, Rachubik Joanna
Decision making under risk External validity Longshot bias Perception of randomness Number preferences in lotteries

WP(11/2019)296. The limitations of the representativeness heuristic: further evidence from choices between lottery tickets

Authors: Krawczyk Michał, Rachubik Joanna
The representativeness heuristic (RH) proposes that people expect even a small sample to have similar characteristics to the parent population. One domain in which it appears to operate is the preference for combinations of numbers on lottery tickets…

WP296. The limitations of the representativeness heuristic: further evidence from choices between lottery tickets

The representativeness heuristic (RH) proposes that people expect even a small sample to have similar characteristics to the parent population. One domain in which it appears to operate is the preference for combinations of numbers on lottery tickets: most players seem to avoid very characteristic, "unrepresentative" combinations, e.g. only containing very low numbers. Likewise, most players may avoid betting on a combination that was drawn recently, because it would seem particularly improbable to be drawn again. We confirm both of these tendencies in two field experiments, building upon Krawczyk and Rachubik (2019, KR19). However, we find no link between these two choices: it is not the same people that show the two biases. In this sense, the RH does not organize the data well. Nevertheless, there are some links related to rationality across the two choices – people who are willing to forgo a monetary payment in order to get the preferred ticket in one task are also willing to do it in the other. We find such preference to be related with misperception of probabilities and providing intuitive, incorrect answers in the Cognitive Reflection Test.


Krawczyk Michał, Rachubik Joanna
Decision making under risk Gambler’s fallacy Lottery choice Perception of randomness Number preferences in lotteries Representativeness heuristic

WP(3/2018)262. Verifying the representativeness heuristic: A field experiment with real-life lottery tickets

Authors: Krawczyk Michał, Rachubik Joanna
Despite having the same probability of being drawn, certain number combinations are more popular than others among the lottery players. One explanation of such a preference is the representativeness heuristic (RH). Unlike previous hypothetical experi…

WP262. Verifying the representativeness heuristic: A field experiment with real-life lottery tickets

Despite having the same probability of being drawn, certain number combinations are more popular than others among the lottery players. One explanation of such a preference is the representativeness heuristic (RH). Unlike previous hypothetical experiments, in the present experiment we used real-life lottery tickets, involving a high payout in case of winning to elicit true preferences. To verify if people prefer randomly-looking number combinations, participants were to choose a preferred ticket. To validate if it is likely to be caused by RH, we correlated preference for "random" sequences with the belief in dependence between subsequent coin tosses. We confirm that people strongly prefer random sequences and that a non-trivial fraction believes in dependence between coin tosses. However, there is no correlation between these two tendencies, questioning the RH explanation. By contrast, participants who have an (irrationally) strong preference for number combinations also tend to make (irrationally) specific predictions in the coin task. Unexpectedly, we find that females are considerably more likely to belong to this group than males.


DOI: http://doi.org.10.26405/WP/WNE/2018/262/003
Krawczyk Michał, Rachubik Joanna
decision bias gambler’s fallacy gender difference hot hand fallacy lottery choice misperception of randomness number preference in lotteries representativeness heuristic
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