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on Experimental Economics |
| By: | Massimo Finocchiaro Castro (Department of Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London) |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of cultural differences on contributions in a public good experiment, analysing real-time interactions between Italian and British subjects in their home countries. In the first treatment, subjects play in nationally-homogeneous groups. In the second treatment, Italian and British subjects play in heterogeneous groups, knowing the nationality of the group members. In the third treatment, we control for a possible “country effect” by giving players no information on nationality. The data suggest that, in homogeneous groups, British subjects contribute significantly more to the public good; contributions are lower in heterogeneous groups; there is no country effect. |
| Keywords: | public goods, experiments, real time interactions, cultural differences |
| JEL: | C92 H41 Z13 |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hol:holodi:0603&r=exp |
| By: | Andrew E. Clark (PSE and IZA Bonn); David Masclet (CNRS and CREM); Marie-Claire Villeval (CNRS, GATE and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | This paper considers the effect of status or relative income on work effort combining experimental evidence from a gift-exchange game with ISSP survey data. We find a consistent negative effect of others’ incomes on individual effort in both datasets. The individual’s rank in the income distribution is a stronger determinant of effort than others’ average income, suggesting that comparisons are more ordinal than cardinal. We then show that effort is also affected by comparisons over time: those who received higher income offers or had higher income rank in the past exert lower levels of effort for a given current income and rank. |
| Keywords: | effort, comparison income, rank, peak-end, experiments |
| JEL: | M54 J33 A13 C92 D63 |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2169&r=exp |
| By: | Sjaak Hurkens; Navin Kartik  |
| Abstract: | This paper reconsiders the evidence on lying or deception presented in Gneezy (2005,American Economic Review). We argue that Gneezy’s data cannot reject the hipótesis that people are one of two kinds: either a person will never lie, or a person will lie whenever she prefers the outcome obtained by lying over the outcome obtained by telling the truth. This implies that so long as lying induces a preferred outcome over truth-telling, a person’s decisión of whether to lie may be completely insensitive to other changes in the induced outcomes, such as exactly how much she monetarily gains relative to how much she hurts an anonymous partner. We run new but similar experiments to those of Gneezy in order to test this hypothesis. We find that our data cannot reject this hypothesis either, but we also discover substantial differences in behavior between our sub jects and Gneezy’s sub jects. |
| Keywords: | experimental economics, lying, deception, social preferences |
| JEL: | C91 |
| Date: | 2006–06–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aub:autbar:664.06&r=exp |