informed consent



Registered subjects are invited to participate in a research study at the University of Utah Laboratory for Experimental Economics and Finance (UULEEF). The purpose of this study is to help economics and finance scientists better understand decision-making and related market behavior by observing your decisions.The goal is to understand the basic principles, if there are any, behind how prices form, how trades occur and how individual information gets aggregated in financial markets. Participants will not directly benefit from participation in the research.

Information that could identify you will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your permission. You may sign up to participate in specific experiments using our web calendar. The calendar indicates the start and end time of available sessions and the show-up payment. The experimental sessions last on average two hours. Some sessions may have restrictions on who is eligible to participate and/or a consent agreement in addition to this one. If so, this will be clearly described during the sign up process.

If you chose to participate, you will be asked to make decisions for which you will be paid. At the beginning of the session you will receive detailed instructions describing how payments will depend on decisions made by you and other participants. The rules and the payments may vary across sessions and may differ between participants. Interaction takes place over a computer network, and your identity is not revealed to other participants. Should you chose to withdraw after listening to the instructions, or if we cannot use you in the session for any reason, you are entitled to a show up payment and are under no further obligation to us. If you chose to stay for the decision making portion of the session, you are entitled to the show-up payment plus whatever money you have earned during the course of the session. Payment is made following the session in cash. Payment is made in private and you will be asked to sign a payment receipt. The receipt is for accounting purposes only and will not be linked to your responses. Once payments are completed, all records are de-identified and kept in a password-protected computer.

No potential risks or discomforts to participants are known other than the risks associated with everyday decision making. Participants do not waive any legal rights through their participation. Your participation is voluntary. If you decide to participate, you are free to withdraw your consent and discontinue participation at any time without penalty. Your decision whether or not to participate will not affect your relationship with the University of Utah or any other organization. If you have any questions, concerns, or complaints about UULEEF, the research conducted at UULEEF, or if you wish to remove your name from our list and stop receiving notifications contact the Lab Manager and Principal Investigator, Elena Asparouhova, at (801) 587-3975 or email her at e.asparouhova@utah.edu. You may also call if you feel you have been harmed by participating.

Contact the Institutional Review Board (IRB) if you have questions regarding your rights as a research participant. Also, contact the IRB if you have questions, complaints or concerns which you do not feel you can discuss with the investigator. The University of Utah IRB may be reached by phone at (801) 581-3655 or by e-mail at irb@hsc.utah.edu.

If you are interested in participating please provide your name and email address. This information is used only to organize and administer experiments.

By pressing "Yes" below [n.b. this is a read only, no "Yes" appears below], you are indicating that you have read and agreed with this information. Once registered, we will contact you in the future by email to let you know of forthcoming sessions, or you may sign up directly on our calendar. You are encouraged to print out a copy of this page for your records.

Use of Deception

It is the policy of UULEEF to always disclose the truth about the purpose and set-up of the experiment. If the instructions tell you that we are interested in recording price data generated in a markets experiment, or reaction times in an experiment on individual decision making, this will be indeed the case, and we will not be secretly looking at other aspects of your participation (choice, demeanor, facial expression, etc.). If the instructions state that dividends are generated at random, independent of your choices, then this will be how dividends are generated. Experiments using deception will not be conducted. UULEEF expressly screens instructions for deception and will not approve experiments proposed by members of the lab that entail deception.