The Endowment Effect
Keith M. Marzilli Ericson1,3 and Andreas Fuster2
1School of Management, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115;
email: kericson@bu.edu
2Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York, NY 10045
3National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Annu. Rev. Econ. 2014. 6:555–79
First published online as a Review in Advance on
March 27, 2014
The Annual Review of Economics is online at
economics.annualreviews.org
This article’s doi:
10.1146/annurev-economics-080213-041320
Copyright © 2014 by Annual Reviews.
All rights reserved
JEL codes: C91, D03, D11, D87
Keywords
reference-dependent preferences, loss aversion, WTP-WTA gap,
expectations
Abstract
The endowment effect is among the best known findings in behavioral
economics and has been used as evidence for theories of reference dependent
preferences and loss aversion. However, a recent literature
has questioned the robustness of the effect in the laboratory, as well as
its relevance in the field. In this review, we provide a summary of the
evidence and describe recent theoretical developments that can potentially
reconcile the different findings, with a focus on expectation based
reference points. We also survey recent work from psychology
that provides either alternatives to or refinements of the usual loss aversion
explanation. We argue that loss aversion is still the leading
paradigm for understanding the endowment effect, but given the rich
psychology behind the effect, a version of the theory that encompasses
multiple reference points may be required.