Robert Sugden

Who they are

Sugden works in behavioural and experimental economics at the University of East Anglia, where the 2013 anchoring paper was written with two colleagues from the same school. His wider work concerns the foundations of economic reasoning and the relationship between experimental findings and the models economists build, which is the context that makes the anchoring paper what it is: an economist asking whether a psychological effect survives contact with a real buying decision.

This page covers his work rather than his life, and records only what the published record supports.

Key papers

Sugden, R., Zheng, J., & Zizzo, D. J. (2013). 'Not all anchors are created equal.' Journal of Economic Psychology, 39, 21-31.* The study tested a range of anchor types on willingness to pay and willingness to accept for familiar consumer products, using real buying and selling decisions at given prices. Anchoring effects appeared only where the anchor was framed as a plausible price for the good being valued, and were stronger for selling than for buying. The conclusion is that anchoring can affect market behaviour and that not all anchors are effective.

Key ideas

The paper's contribution is a boundary rather than an effect. Anchoring research had established that numbers move estimates; the open question for anyone selling anything was whether numbers move purchases. The answer here is that they do, conditionally, and the condition is that the number has to be admissible as a price.

That single result reorganises how the commercial literature should be read. It explains why the struck-through price and the expensive bottle work, and why the demonstrations built on numbers with no relationship to the product have not replicated well.

Concepts on this site

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