Do bidders require a monetary premium for cognitive effort in an auction?

Research on the influence of cognitive effort on decision making has grown in recent years. We argue that when cognitive effort is required, a decision maker requests a monetary premium for his effort. In our experiment, the participants were asked to bid a price for lotteries of differing complexity that required varying amounts of cognitive effort. Furthermore, some participants were given a simple calculator. We show that the increase in cognitive efforts increases the monetary premium they request, and leads to better pricing of similar lotteries.