Hey everyone,

I'm currently a final year economics undergraduate, and as part of my course I have to do a dissertation/research project. I have decided to research deal or no deal, and the effects of path dependency in affecting economic agents attitudes to risk.

The project will basically look into the factors affecting contestants decisions and how likely they are to choose the option deal at any given point in the game. Some literature around this area suggests that factors such as age and gender have no effect on contestants, and the main determinant in peoples decisions is the path they follow in the game. So a player who has a good round or a bad round is much more likely to continue on, than a player who experiences a fairly neutral round.

As such, I'm currently in the process of collecting data from previous editions of the show. However, I was wondering if anyone here had any data which I may be able to use. Something I am struggling hugely with is trying to find data for the contestants age and profession, which are both factors I feel necessary to have in order to fully understand attitudes to risk. If anyone was to know where I may be able to find this I would be hugely grateful.

If anyone has any questions regarding this too I am more than happy to try my best to explain further!

Cheers Guys

The Today's Show threads for each game will typically refer to an occupation where it makes the edit (in an early post).

An age may be listed there too, but this is not often mentioned if anywhere near 45. A similar study by Post, et al. (which you may have read - it's on the ssrn.com website somewhere) used an approximation based on references to childrens' ages for some contestants where age wasn't explicitly mentioned.

I'm intrigued to see if UK results differ from the similar studies of other versions, given our 5-3-3-3-3-3 structure (most studies are of 26-case variants) and the higher levels of offer variance.