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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Matthew W. McCarter (Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University); Anya C. Samak (School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison); Roman M. Sheremeta (Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University) |
| Abstract: | It is common in organizational life to be simultaneously involved in multiple collective actions. These collective actions may be modeled using public good dilemmas. The developing social dilemma literature has two perspectives – the “divided loyalties” and “conditional cooperation” perspectives – that give opposite predictions about how individuals will behave when they simultaneously play two identical public good games. The current paper creates consensus between these social dilemma perspectives by examining cooperative behavior of participants interacting in two public good games with either different or the same group members. In each round, individuals have a common budget constraint across the two games. In support of the conditional cooperator’s perspective of social dilemmas, we find that playing two games with different, rather than same, group members increases overall contributions. Over the course of the experiment, participants playing two games with different group members shift their contributions significantly more often toward more cooperative public good games than participants playing with the same group members. |
| Keywords: | cooperation, conditional cooperation, public good, experiments, group composition |
| JEL: | C72 C73 C91 D03 H41 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:13-08&r=evo |
| By: | Giovanna Devetag; Sibilla Di Guida; Luca Polonio |
| Abstract: | We analyze subjects' eye movements while they make decisions in a series of one-shot games. The majority of them perform a partial and selective analysis of the payoff matrix, often ignoring the payoffs of the opponent and/or paying attention only to specific cells. Our results suggest that subjects apply boundedly rational decision heuristics that involve best responding to a simplification of the decision problem, obtained either by ignoring the other players' motivations or by considering them only for a subset of outcomes. Finally, we find a correlation between types of eye movements observed and choices in the games. |
| Keywords: | one-shot games, eye-tracking, similarity, categorization, focal points, individual behavior, experimental economics, behavioral economics |
| Date: | 2013–02–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2013/05&r=evo |
| By: | Pablo Branas-Garza (Business School, Middlesex University London, London, UK and Economic Science Institute, Chapman University); Jaromir Kovarik (Dpto. Fundamentos Analisis Economico I & BRiDGE, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain); Levent Neyse (GLOBE: Department of Economics, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain) |
| Abstract: | Gene-culture co-evolution emphasizes the joint role of culture and genes for the emergence of altruistic and cooperative behaviors and behavioral genetics provides estimates of their relative importance. However, these approaches cannot assess which biological traits determine altruism or how. We analyze the association between altruism in adults and the exposure to prenatal sex hormones, using the second-to-fourth digit ratio. We find an inverted U-shaped relation for left and right hands, which is very consistent for men and less systematic for women. Subjects with both high and low digit ratios give less than individuals with intermediate digit ratios. We repeat the exercise with the same subjects seven months later and find a similar association, even though subjects' behavior differs the second time they play the game. We then construct proxies of the median digit ratio in the population (using more than 1000 different subjects), show that subjects' altruism decreases with the distance of their ratio to these proxies. These results provide direct evidence that prenatal events contribute to the variation of altruistic behavior and that the exposure to fetal hormones is one of the relevant biological factors. In addition, the findings suggest that there might be an optimal level of exposure to these hormones from social perspective. |
| Keywords: | Altruism, Prosociality, Prenatal Sex Hormones, Digit Ratio, Genoeconomics |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:13-09&r=evo |
| By: | Cristina Bodea; Adrienne LeBas |
| Abstract: | How do social contracts come into being? This paper argues that norm adoption plays an important and neglected role in this process. Using novel data from urban Nigeria, we examine why individuals adopt norms favoring a citizen obligation to pay tax where state enforcement is weak. We find that public goods delivery by the state produces the willingness to pay tax, but community characteristics also have a strong and independent effect on both social contract norms and actual tax payment. Individuals are less likely to adopt pro-tax norms if they have access to community provision of security and other services. In conflict-prone communities, where "self-help" provision of club goods is less effective, individuals are more likely to adopt social contract norms. Finally, we show that social contract norms substantially boost tax payment. This paper has broad implications for literatures on state formation, taxation, clientelism, and public goods provision. |
| Date: | 2013–01–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:wps/2013-02&r=evo |
| By: | Christophe Muller (Aix-Marseille University (Aix-Marseille School of Economics, EHESS & CNRS.); Marc Vothknecht (German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin)) |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of violent conflict on social capital, as measured by citizen participation in community groups, defined by four activity types: governance, social service, infrastructure development and risk-sharing. Combining household panel data from Indonesia with conflict event information, we find an overall decrease in citizen contributions in districts affected by group violence in the early post-Suharto transition period. However, participation in communities with a high degree of ethnic polarization is less affected, and is even stimulated for local governance and risk-sharing activities. Moreover, individual engagement appears to depend on the involvement of other members from the same ethnic group, which points toward building of intra-ethnic social networks in the presence of violence. Finally, our results show the danger of generalization when dealing with citizen participation in community activities. We find a large variety of responses depending on the activity and its economic and social functions. We also find large observed and unobserved individual heterogeneities of the effect of violence on participation. Once an appropriate nomenclature of activities is used and controls for heterogeneity are applied, we find that the ethnic and social configuration of society is central in understanding citizen participation. |
| Keywords: | Violent Conflict, Citizen Participation, Local Public Goods |
| JEL: | D74 H42 O11 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1306&r=evo |
| By: | Kohsaka Youki (Center for Finance Research, Waseda University); Grzegorz Mardyla (Faculty of Economics, Kinki University); Shinji Takenaka (Japan Center for Economic Research); Yoshiro Tsutsui (Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University) |
| Abstract: | We experimentally investigate the existence of and possible origin of the disposition effect. Our approach has three distinct characteristics: Firstly, we created an experimental environment that closely mimics a real stock market and were thus able to obtain and analyze trading behavior data that accurately depicts actual individual investor trading behavior. Secondly, based on a questionnaire survey we conducted during the experiment, we were able to pinpoint each individual participantfs reference point. This, in effect, allowed us to verify an independent hypothesis of the existence of the disposition effect. such an approach differs from the extant literature, where only a joint hypothesis has been examined so far. Thirdly, we measured individual loss aversion coefficients and directly tested whether loss aversion is a cause of the disposition effect. Our results indicate both the existence of the disposition effect as well as prospect theoryfs loss aversion being one of its sources. |
| Keywords: | disposition effect, loss aversion, investor behavior, experimental economics |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osk:wpaper:1302&r=evo |
| By: | Maria De Paola; Francesca Gioia (Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Statistiche e Finanziarie, Università della Calabria) |
| Abstract: | In a simple theoretical model we show that impatience affects academic performance through two different channels: impatient students spend less effort in studying activities and set less ambitious objectives in terms of grades at exams. As a consequence, the relationship between impatience and academic success may vary according to how performance is measured. Using data from a sample of Italian undergraduate students, we find a strong negative relationship between impatience and both the average grade at exams and the probability of graduating with honours. Conversely, a negative but not statistically significant correlation emerges between time preferences and both the number of credits earned in the three years following enrolment and the probability of timely graduation. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of impatience and controlling for family background characteristics, for cognitive abilities and for risk preferences. |
| Keywords: | Time preferences, impatience, human capital, academic success |
| JEL: | I20 D03 D91 J01 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clb:wpaper:201302&r=evo |
| By: | Charness, Gary; Grieco, Daniela |
| Abstract: | Creativity is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon that has hardly been considered byeconomists, despite a great deal of economic importance. This paper presents a series ofexperiments where subjects face creativity tasks where, in one case, ex-ante goals and constraintsare imposed on their answers, and in the other case no restrictions apply. The effects of financialincentives in stimulating creativity in both types of tasks is then tested, together with the impactof personal features like risk and ambiguity aversion. Our findings show that, in general,financial incentives affect “in-box†(constrained) creativity, but do not facilitate “blue skyâ€(unconstrained) creativity. However, in the latter case incentives do play a role for ambiguityaverseagents, who tend to be significantly less creative and seem to need extrinsic motivation toexert effort in a task whose odds of success they don’t know. We do find that measures ofcreative style, sensation-seeking preferences, and past involvement in artistic endeavors arerelated to our creativity score, but do not find any difference across gender for either form ofcreativity. |
| Keywords: | Economics, creativity, incentives, ambiguity, constraints, ex-ante goals |
| Date: | 2013–02–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:ucsbec:qt4mr6p1d5&r=evo |
| By: | Erixon, Lennart (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm University) |
| Abstract: | The theory of transformation pressure maintains that central actors in established firms will be more productive when experiencing an actual fall in profits. Actors fearing that the survival of the firm is at stake will then become more alert, calculating and creative favoring a transformation. The neo-Schumpeterians follow Schumpeter by largely ignoring the importance of negative driving forces for innovations and the productivity performance of firms. In the neoclassical Schumpeterian literature stronger competition and also lower product demand may induce innovations and productivity increases in established firm. But this literature neglects the underlying psychological mechanism. The ideas in the theory of transformation pressure can easily be incorporated into a Darwinian framework emphasizing basic human drives, the struggle for existence and the adaptation to new external circumstances. The results from tests of the theory of transformation pressure are ambiguous. An experiment confirmed that firms are governed by bounded rationally but only partly that they will upgrade their growth strategy in a profit recession. There are arguments in both industrial economics, psychology and neuroscience for a qualified theory of transformation pressure. Productivity is enhanced by moderate pressure or by periodic shifts between hard pressures and good opportunities. |
| Keywords: | transformation pressure; bounded rationality; creative destruction; negative driving forces; productivity growth; innovations; neuroscience; stress; economic psychology; universal Darwinism |
| JEL: | B52 D21 E32 L21 O31 |
| Date: | 2013–01–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sunrpe:2013_0004&r=evo |