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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | David Gill; Rebecca Stone |
| Abstract: | Teams are becoming increasingly important in work settings. We develop a framework to study the strategic implications of a meritocratic notion of desert under which team members care about receiving what they feel they deserve. Team members find it painful to receive less than their perceived entitlement, while receiving more may induce pleasure or pain depending on whether preferences exhibit desert elation or desert guilt. Our notion of desert generalizes distributional concern models to situations in which effort choices affect the distribution perceived to be fair; in particular, desert nests inequity aversion over money net of effort costs as a special case. When identical teammates share output equally, desert guilt generates a continuum of symmetric equilibria. Equilibrium effort can lie above or below the level in the absence of desert, so desert guilt generates behavior consistent with both positive and negative reciprocity and may underpin social norms of cooperation. |
| Keywords: | Desert, deservingness, equity, inequity aversion, loss aversion, reference-dependence preferences, guilt, reciprocity, social norms, team production |
| JEL: | D63 J33 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:563&r=evo |
| By: | Fehr, Ernst (University of Zurich); Hoff, Karla (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | Economists have traditionally treated preferences as exogenously given. Preferences are assumed to be influenced by neither beliefs nor the constraints people face. As a consequence, changes in behaviour are explained exclusively in terms of changes in the set of feasible alternatives. Here we argue that the opposition to explaining behavioural changes in terms of preference changes is ill-founded, that the psychological properties of preferences render them susceptible to direct social influences, and that the impact of "society" on preferences is likely to have important economic and social consequences. |
| Keywords: | endogenous preferences, culture, caste, frames, anchors, elicitation devices |
| JEL: | A12 A13 D01 K0 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5919&r=evo |
| By: | Barmettler, Franziska (Foundation for Global Sustainability); Fehr, Ernst (University of Zurich); Zehnder, Christian (University of Lausanne) |
| Abstract: | Social preference research has received considerable attention in recent years. Researchers have demonstrated that the presence of people with social preferences has important implications in many economic domains. However, it is important to be aware of the fact that the empirical basis of this literature relies to a large extent on experiments that do not provide anonymity between experimenter and subject. It has been argued that this lack of experimenter-subject anonymity may create selfish incentives to engage in seemingly other-regarding behavior. If this were the case these experiments would overestimate the importance of social preferences. Previous studies provide mixed results and methodological differences within and across studies make it difficult to isolate the impact of experimenter-subject anonymity on prosocial behavior. In this paper we use a novel procedure that allows us to examine the impact of the exact same ceteris-paribus variation in anonymity on behavior in three of the most commonly used games in the social preference literature. Our data does not support the hypothesis that introducing experimenter-subject anonymity affects observed prosocial behavior. We do not observe significant effects of experimenter-subject anonymity on prosocial behavior in any of our games. |
| Keywords: | laboratory experiments, anonymity, scrutiny, prosocial behavior |
| JEL: | C91 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5925&r=evo |
| By: | Boettke, Peter |
| Abstract: | James Scott has written a detailed ethnography on the lives of the peoples of upland Southeast Asia who choose to escape oppressive government by living at the edge of their civilization. To the political economist the fascinating story told by Scott provides useful narratives in need of analytical exposition. There remains in this work a “plea for mechanism”; the mechanisms that enable social cooperation to emerge among individuals living outside the realm of state control. Social cooperation outside the formal rules of governance, nevertheless require “rules” of social intercourse, and techniques of “enforcement” to ensure the disciplining of opportunistic behavior. |
| Keywords: | economic development; self-regulation; political economy; peasant economy |
| JEL: | O17 P48 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:33067&r=evo |
| By: | Brice Corgnet (Economic Science Institute, Chapman University); Roberto Hernán-González (Economic Science Institute, Chapman University) |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of participative decision making in an experimental principalagent game, where the principal can consult the agent’s preferred option regarding the task to be undertaken in the final stage of the game. We show that consulting the agent was beneficial to principals as long as they followed the agent’s choice. Ignoring the agent’s choice was detrimental to the principal as it engendered negative emotions and low levels of transfers. Nevertheless, the majority of principals were reluctant to change their mind and adopt the agent’s proposal. Our results suggest that the ability to change one’s own mind is an important dimension of managerial success. |
| Keywords: | organizational behavior, participative decision making, principal-agent model |
| JEL: | C92 D23 D82 E2 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:11-04&r=evo |
| By: | Daniel M. Hungerman |
| Abstract: | A large literature shows that religious participation is associated with a wide range of behaviors and outcomes, but what drives this association is unclear. On the one hand, this association may stem from correlations in preferences, where those with tastes for religion coincidentally have particular tastes for other behaviors as well. Alternately, religious participation may directly affect behavior; for example many religious organizations impose rules and proscriptions on their members and these rules may affect members’ decisions. Using the canonical economic model of religiosity, I develop an empirical test to investigate the importance of religious proscriptions on behavior. Several empirical applications of this test are conducted; the results indicate a strong role for religious proscriptions in determining behavior. The test developed here does not require an instrumental variable for religion and could be applied to the study of criminal gangs, terrorist organizations, fraternities, communes, political groups, and other “social clubs.” |
| JEL: | H23 I1 Z12 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17375&r=evo |
| By: | Lotito, Gianna; Migheli, Matteo; Ortona, Guido |
| Abstract: | Our experiment aims at studying the impact of two types of relational goods on the voluntary contributions to the production of a public good, i.e. acquaintance among the contributors and having performed a common work before the experiment. We implement two treatments with 128 participants from two different groups. In the first treatment the subjects are left talking in a room before the experiment (cheap talk treatment); they are not suggested any particular topic to talk about, nor are they requested to perform any activity in particular. The second treatment involves the performance of a common work (namely, the computation of some indices of economic performance of three companies, based on their balance sheets). The two groups of subjects are composed either by people with or without previous acquaintance. An equal number of subjects from each of these groups is then allocated to either treatment. After that the subjects played a standard 10-rounds public goods game in groups of 4. The groups were gender-homogeneous. This allows us also to inquire for the possible presence of a gender effect in our experiment. Our results show that: 1) both common work and previous acquaintance increase the average contribution to the public good, 2) there is a relevant gender effect with women contributing more or less than men, depending on the treatment. Therefore, we conclude that relational goods are important to enhance cooperation, that acquaintance and working together are rather complements than substitutes, and that different relational goods produce different effects on cooperation. Also, we find further evidence for women's behaviour to be more context-specific than men's. |
| Keywords: | relational goods; public goods experiments; gender effect |
| JEL: | C91 H41 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uca:ucapdv:160&r=evo |
| By: | James J. Heckman |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the problems and potential benefits of integrating personality psychology into economics. Economists have much to learn from and contribute to personality psychology. |
| JEL: | I2 J24 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17378&r=evo |
| By: | Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. (University of Melbourne); Schurer, Stefanie (Victoria University of Wellington) |
| Abstract: | We use a large, nationally-representative sample of working-age adults to demonstrate that personality (as measured by the Big Five) is stable over a four-year period. Average personality changes are small and do not vary substantially across age groups. Intra-individual personality change is generally unrelated to experiencing adverse life events and is unlikely to be economically meaningful. Like other non-cognitive traits, personality can be modeled as a stable input into many economic decisions. |
| Keywords: | non-cognitive skills, Big-Five personality traits, stability |
| JEL: | J24 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5943&r=evo |
| By: | Mayshar, Joram; Moav, Omer; Neeman, Zvika |
| Abstract: | We propose a general theory that explains the extent of the state and accounts for related institutions as byproducts of the state's extractive technology. We posit further that this extractive technology is determined by the transparency of the production technology. This theory is applied to examine two principal phases in the evolution of the early state. First, we argue that the common explanation of the emergence of the state as a consequence of the availability of food surplus due to the Neolithic Revolution is flawed, since it ignores Malthusian considerations. In contrast, we suggest that what led to the emergence of the state was a transformation of the tax technology that was induced by the greater transparency of the new farming technology. We then apply our theory to explain key institutional features that distinguished ancient Egypt from ancient Mesopotamia, and, in particular, to explain their different land tenure regimes. |
| Keywords: | Appropriability; Institutions; Land Tenure; The Early State; Transparency |
| JEL: | D02 D82 H10 O43 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8548&r=evo |