|
on Experimental Economics |
|
Issue of 2016‒11‒27
25 papers chosen by |
| By: | James Andreoni; Marta Serra-Garcia |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the interaction between moral contradictions and time in charitable giving. Applying a simple theoretical framework to two longitudinal experiments with actual charitable donations, we show that moral contradictions become the source of a new kind of time inconsistency linked to a demand for flexibility, rather than the more typical demand for commitment. This kind of time inconsistency coexists with the opposite of kind of time inconsistency arising from temptation to give, which is exhibited by a substantial minority of individuals. Our results reveal that time inconsistency is pervasive and exhibits unique features in the charitable domain. |
| JEL: | C91 D64 D9 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22824&r=exp |
| By: | Morone, Andrea; Nemore, Francesco; Nuzzo, Simone |
| Abstract: | While a basic theoretical principle in public economics assumes that individuals'behaviour is fully- optimizer with respect to the introduction of a tax, an increasing body of research is presenting evidence that agents decision-making is often affected by non-negligible cognitive biases , which could be responsible for lower market performance as well as for deviations from s tandard theoretical predictions. This paper extends the latter strand of research focusing on two trend topics in public economics: tax salience and tax incidence. While the former refers to the prominence of the tax, the latter places emphasis on the statutory vs. factual division of tax payments. Is market performance affected by the salience of the tax? Is the incidence of a tax independent of which side of the market it is levied on (Liability-Side-Equivalence-Principle, LES)? We address these questions through a laboratory experiment in which one unit of a fictitious good is traded through a double-auction market ins titution. Bas ed on a panel data analys is , our contribution shows that a non-salient tax reduces both the allocational and informational efficiency o f the market with respect to the instance in which the tax is salient. Moreover, we show that the LES does not hold in practice. |
| Keywords: | Tax incidence,Tax salience,Liability Side Equivalence,Choice behaviour,Laboratory |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2062&r=exp |
| By: | Inga Jonaityte (Dept. of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venice) |
| Abstract: | This study explores decision-making processes of promoters of financial products and financial advice services. We collect experimental evidence about how these professionals perceive their customersÕ needs, preferences, and biases. By focusing on the behavioral differences between expert (621) and non-expert subjects (573) this study shows that expertise alone is not enough to prevent biased behavior. Our results suggest that even the most experienced and well-informed professionals exhibit systematic biases. We discuss how interpersonal cues used in financial communications may induce trust-related biases. This research provides useful insights for future in-depth research on how contextual factors, often non-informative, influence financial advisersÕ judgments and subsequent advice. |
| Keywords: | financial advice; consumer finance; financial advertisement; disclosure; information processing; expertise; trust; experiment. |
| JEL: | D03 D1 D8 D81 D83 D84 G11 G2 G21 G23 M3 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vnm:wpdman:130&r=exp |
| By: | Morone, Andrea; Nuzzo, Simone |
| Abstract: | This paper aims at providing an overview of several topics that have been addressed in the field of experimental asset markets. Rather than being exhaustive in any single topic, this review is meant to gather the several research strands, and to provide a powerful picture of the main advances on the use of experimental techniques for the study of financial markets. |
| Keywords: | Experimental Asset Markets |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2060&r=exp |
| By: | Joseph Cummins (Department of Economics, University of California Riverside) |
| Abstract: | I present results from a partial re-analysis of the Kenyan school tracking experiment first described in Duflo et. al (2011). My results suggest that, in a developing country school system with state-employed teachers, tracking can reduce short-run test scores of initially low-ability students with high learning potential. The highest scoring students subjected only to the tracking intervention scored well below comparable students in untracked classrooms at the end of the intervention. In contrast, students assigned to tracking under the experimental alternative teacher intervention experienced gains from tracking that increased across the outcome distribution. These alternative teachers were drawn from local areas, exhibited significantly higher effort levels and faced different incentives to produce learning. I conclude that although Pareto-improvements in test scores from tracking are possible, they are not guaranteed. |
| Keywords: | ability tracking, human capital, economic development |
| JEL: | I21 J45 O15 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucr:wpaper:201615&r=exp |
| By: | Cary Deck (University of Arkansas; Chapman University); Erik O. Kimbrough (Simon Fraser University) |
| Abstract: | We report an experimental test of alternative rules in innovation contests when success may not be feasible and contestants may learn from each other. Following Halac et al. (forthcoming), the contest designer can vary the prize allocation rule from Winner-Take-All in which the first successful innovator receives the entire prize to Shared in which all successful innovators during the contest duration share in the prize. The designer can also vary the information disclosure policy from Public in which at each period, all information about contestants' past successes and failures is publicly available, to Private, in which contestants only know their own histories. In our setting, the optimal contest design in terms of maximizing the probability that at least one innovator is successful depends on the probability of successful innovation, given that innovation is feasible. Under some parameters the designer will prefer a WTA-Public contest; while, under others he will prefer Shared-Private. Our experiments provide evidence that Private disclosure contests behaviorally dominate Public disclosure, regardless of the prize allocation rule, and moreover that Shared-Private contests dominate WTA-Private contests. |
| Keywords: | research and development, contests, experiments |
| JEL: | C7 C9 D4 D7 |
| Date: | 2016–10–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sfu:sfudps:dp16-13&r=exp |
| By: | Mikhail Anufriev (Economics Discipline Group, University of Technology, Sydney); Cars Hommes (CeNDEF, University of Amsterdam); Tomasz Makarewicz (CeNDEF, University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | We study a model in which individual agents use simple linear first order price forecasting rules, adapting them to the complex evolving market environment with a smart Genetic Algorithm optimization procedure. The novelties are: (1) a parsimonious experimental foundation of individual forecasting behaviour; (2) an explanation of individual and aggregate behavior in four different experimental settings, (3) improved one-period and 50-period ahead forecasting of lab experiments, and (4) a characterization of the mean, median and empirical distribution of forecasting heuristics. The median of the distribution of GA forecasting heuristics can be used in designing or validating simple Heuristic Switching Model. |
| Keywords: | Expectation Formation; Learning to Forecast Experiment; Genetic Algorithm Model of Individual Learning |
| JEL: | C53 C63 C91 D03 D83 D84 |
| Date: | 2015–07–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uts:ecowps:29&r=exp |
| By: | Danijela Vuletic |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effects of reminders, and frames used to invoke higher levels of empathy and altruistic motives on the willingness to donate blood. We have conducted a randomized field experiment with 3236 blood donors from Bosnia and Herzegovina, in order to test how effective frames were when used in letters soliciting blood donation. Further, we tested the effectiveness of the letter itself which served as a specific reminder, making the need for blood more salient. Our baseline group did not receive any letter. Another seven groups received letters which differed in terms of goal framing; whether a specific victim was identified; and the gender of a victim. We found that a reminder of the need for blood in the form of a simple letter increases the probability of coming to donate blood by 63% relative to the baseline group, suggesting that reminder letters may serve as a cost effective policy tool. At the same time, we found that the framing of the letter had relatively little effect when donors are allowed longer period to make their donation decision. |
| Keywords: | field experiment; blood donation; reminders; goal framing; identifiable victim effect; |
| JEL: | C93 D64 A13 I18 |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp554&r=exp |
| By: | Sule Alan (University of Essex); Seda Ertac (Koc University); Elif Kubilay (Bocconi University); Gyongyi Loranth (University of Virginia) |
| Abstract: | We study the evolution of gender differences in the willingness to assume the decision-maker role in a group, which is a major component of leadership. Using data from a large-scale field experiment, we show that while there is no gender difference in the willingness to make risky decisions on behalf of a group in a sample of children, a large gap emerges in a sample of adolescents. In particular, the proportion of girls who exhibit leadership willingness drops by 39% going from childhood to adolescence. We explore the possible causes of this drop and find that a significant part of it can be explained by a dramatic decline in "social confidence," measured by the willingness to perform a real effort task in public. We show that it is possible to capture the observed link between public performance and leadership by estimating a structural model that incorporates costs related to social concerns. These findings are important in addressing the lower propensity of females to self-select into high-level positions, which are typically subject to greater public scrutiny. |
| Keywords: | leadership, gender, risk taking, social confidence, experiment |
| JEL: | C91 C93 D03 I28 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2016-024&r=exp |
| By: | Booth, Alison L. (Australian National University); Fan, Elliott (National Taiwan University); Meng, Xin (Australian National University); Zhang, Dandan (Peking University) |
| Abstract: | In the laboratory experiment reported in this paper we explore how evolving institutions and social norms, which we label 'culture', change individuals' preferences and behaviour in mainland China. From 1949 China experienced dramatic changes in its socio-economic institutions. These began with communist central planning and the establishment of new social norms, including the promotion of gender equality in place of the Confucian view of female 'inferiority'. Market-oriented reforms, begun in 1978, helped China achieve unprecedented economic growth and at the same time Marxist ideology was gradually replaced by the acceptance of individualistic free-market ideology. During this period, many old traditions crept back and as a consequence social norms gradually changed again. In our experiment we investigate gender differences in competitive choices across different birth cohorts of individuals who, during their crucial developmental-age, were exposed to one of the two regimes outlined above. In particular we investigate gender differences in competitive choices for different birth cohorts in Beijing using their counterparts in Taipei (subject to the same original Confucian traditions) to control for the general time trend. Our findings confirm: (i) that females in Beijing are significantly more likely to compete than females from Taipei; (ii) that Beijing females from the 1958 birth cohort are more competitive than their male counterparts as well as more competitive than later Beijing birth cohorts; and (iii) that for Taipei there are no statistically significant differences across cohort or gender in willingness to compete. In summary, our findings confirm that exposure to different institutions and social norms during the crucial developmental age changes individuals' behaviour. Our findings also provide further evidence that gender differences in economic preferences are not innately determined. |
| Keywords: | gender, competitive choices, culture, behavioural economics |
| JEL: | C9 C91 C92 J16 P3 P5 D03 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10364&r=exp |
| By: | AJ Bostian (School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland); David Goldbaum (Economics Discipline Group, University of Technology, Sydney) |
| Abstract: | Crawford and Haller (1990) describe a repeated two-player coordination game defined by the absence of a common language. Coordination is achieved only through path dependent play relying on time consistent labels. We consider a game played by a large population similarly looking to coordinate but without the consistency in labels over time and with asymmetric coordinated payoff so that players have differing preferences regarding which coordinated structure emerges. In experiments, we link subjects together in a social network with limited ability to observe others. The complexity of the game and multitude of states thwarts solving for optimal play and yet the population demonstrates success in employing path dependency and the consistency of the social relationships to learn to coordinate. To capture this evolution, we model decisions with an experience-weighted attractor having recency, reinforcement, and lock-on biases. We find considerable heterogeneity in biases across individuals. Drawing on the observed biases, we conduct simulations to identify the extent to which individuals and environment determine group dynamics. |
| Keywords: | Experiment; Simulation; Social Network; Experience Weighted Attraction; Nested Logit |
| JEL: | C73 D83 D85 |
| Date: | 2016–04–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uts:ecowps:36&r=exp |
| By: | Morone, Andrea; Nuzzo, Simone |
| Abstract: | We investigate, by mean of a lab experiment, a market inspired by two strands of literature on one hand we have herd behaviour in non-market situations, and on the other hand aggregation of private information in markets. The former suggests that socially undesirable herd behaviour may result when information is private; the latter suggests that socially undesirable behaviour may be eliminated through the market. As the trading mechanism might be a compounding factor, we investigate two kinds of market mechanism: the double auction, where bids, asks and trades take place in continuous time throughout a trading period; and the clearing house, where bids and asks are placed once in a trading period, and which are then cleared by an aggregating device. As a main result, this paper shows that double auction markets are, in several instances, superior to clearing house markets in terms of informational efficiency. Moreover, the employed trading institutions do not exhibit significant differences in both market volume and price volatility. |
| Keywords: | Experimental Markets,Market Efficiency,Double Auction,Clearing House |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2061&r=exp |
| By: | Baron, David; Bowen, T. Renee; Nunnari, Salvatore |
| Abstract: | We present a laboratory experiment to study the effect of communication on durable coalitions - coalitions that support the same allocation from one period to the next. We study a bargaining setting where the status quo policy is determined by the policy implemented in the previous period. Our main experimental treatment is the opportunity for subjects to negotiate with one another through unrestricted cheap-talk communication before a proposal is made and comes to a vote. We compare committees with no communication, committees where communication is public and messages are observed by all committee members, and committees where communication is private and any committee member can send private messages to any other committee member. We find that the opportunity to communicate has a significant impact on outcomes and coalitions. When communication is public, there are more universal coalitions and fewer majoritarian coalitions. With private communication, there are more majoritarian coalitions and fewer universal coalitions. With either type of communication coalitions occur more frequently and last longer than with no communication. The content of communication is correlated with coalition type and with the formation and dissolution of durable coalitions. These findings suggest a coordination role for communication that varies with the mode of communication. |
| Keywords: | communication; Endogenous Status Quo; Laboratory experiments; legislative bargaining |
| JEL: | C73 C78 C92 D71 D72 D78 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11613&r=exp |
| By: | Philipp Külpmann; Davit Khantadze |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we use a laboratory experiment to investigate the effect of absence of common knowledge on the outcomes of coordination games. We introduce cognitive types into a pure coordination game in which there is no common knowledge about the distribution of cognitive types. In our experiment, around 76% of the subjects managed to coordinate on the payoff-dominant equilibrium despite the absence of common knowledge. However, around 9% of the players had first-order beliefs that lead to coordination failure and another 9% exhibited coordination failure due to higher-order beliefs. Furthermore, we compare our results with predictions of different models of higher-order beliefs, commonly used in the literature. |
| JEL: | C72 C92 D83 |
| Date: | 2016–11–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jmp:jm2016:pkl168&r=exp |
| By: | Gee, Laura Katherine (Tufts University) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents the results from a 2.3 million person field experiment that varies whether or not a job seeker sees the number of applicants for a job posting on a large job posting website, LinkedIn. This intervention increases the likelihood that a person will finish an application by 3.5%. Women have a larger increase in their likelihood of finishing an application than men. Overall, adding this information to a job posting may offer a light-touch way to both increase application rates and alter the diversity of the applicant pool. |
| Keywords: | field experiment, labor search, social information, big data, gender, risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, uncertainty, herding, competition |
| JEL: | C93 D01 D83 J21 J22 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10372&r=exp |
| By: | Greiff, Matthias; Egbert, Henrik |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces the Pay-What-You-Want game which represents the interaction between a buyer and a seller in a Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) situation. The PWYW game embeds the dictator game and the trust game as subgames. This allows us to use previous experimental studies with the dictator and the trust game to identify three factors that can influence the success of PWYW pricing in business practice: (i) social context, (ii) social information, and (iii) deservingness. Only few cases of PWYW pricing for a longer period of time have been documented. By addressing repeated games, we isolate two additional factors which are likely to contribute to successful implementations of PWYW as a long term pricing strategy. These are (iv) communication and (v) the reduction of goal conflicts. The central implication of this study is that the results from experimental economics can provide guidance to developing long-term applications of PWYW pricing. |
| Keywords: | Pay-What-You-Want; PWYW Game; participative pricing; experiments; reciprocity |
| JEL: | C90 D11 M21 M31 |
| Date: | 2016–11–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:75222&r=exp |
| By: | Chihli Hung (Chung Yuan Christian University); You-Xin Cao (Chung Yuan Christian University) |
| Abstract: | Word of mouth (WOM) has become the main information resource while making business or buying strategies. Most WOM mining research studies focus on classification of WOM documents according to their sentimental orientations, i.e. positive and negative. Generally speaking a well-defined sentiment lexicon is used to provide the sentiment score for words. As a word may have different meanings when used in different domains so it may have different sentiment score. However such a lexicon is static and does not adapt to different domains. In this paper, we first build an adaptive Chinese sentiment lexicon from a real product review website. Then we identify feature words and opinion words of each sentence via the technique of mutual correlations between words. Based on association rules and mutual information, we extract the feature words and their associated collocation words. Finally the term frequency-inverse class frequency (TF-ICF) is used to extract word sentiment scores. According to experimental results, the usage and distribution of words are varied from different domains and our approach has a potential for Chinese WOM classification. |
| Keywords: | Word of Mouth; Sentiment Analysis; Opinion Mining; Association Rule; Sentiment Lexicon |
| JEL: | D80 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:5306988&r=exp |
| By: | Fabbri, Marco (Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics and Institute of Private Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burg); Nicola Barbieri, Paolo (Centre for Health Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg); Bigoni, Maria (Department of Economics, University of Bologna) |
| Abstract: | We designed a natural-field experiment in the context of local public transportation to test whether rewards in the form of lottery prizes coupled with traditional sanctions effciently reduce free-riding. We organized a lottery in a medium-size Italian city the participation in which is linked to purchasing an on-board bus ticket. The lottery was then implemented in half of otherwise identical buses operating in the municipality. Our theoretical model shows that the introduction of the lottery generated an increase in the number of tickets sold and that it is possible to design a self-financing lottery. To estimate the effect of the lottery's introduction on the amount of tickets sold, we matched and compared treated and control buses operating on the same day on the exact same route. The results show that buses participating in the lottery sold significantly more tickets than the control buses. The increase in revenue from the tickets sold was more than the lottery prize amount. |
| Keywords: | Enforcement; Free-riding; Public Good; Risk Attitudes; Sanctions |
| JEL: | D04 H42 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0678&r=exp |
| By: | Michal Bauer; Jana Cahlikova; Julie Chytilova; Tomas Zelinsky |
| Abstract: | Ethnic hostilities often spread rapidly. This paper investigates the influence of peers on willingness to sacrifice one’s own resources in order to cause harm to others. We implement a novel experimental design, in which we manipulate the identity of a victim as well as the social context, by allowing subjects to observe randomly assigned peers. The results show that the susceptibility to follow destructive peer behavior is great when harm is caused to members of the Roma minority, but small when it impacts co-ethnics. If not exposed to destructive peers, subjects do not discriminate. We observe very similar patterns in a norms elicitation experiment: destructive behavior towards Roma is not generally rated as more socially appropriate than when directed at co-ethnics but norms are more sensitive to social contexts. The findings can help to explain why ethnic hostilities can spread quickly among masses, even in societies with few visible signs of systematic inter-ethnic hatred, and why many societies institute hate crime laws. |
| Keywords: | ethnic conflict; discrimination; hostile behavior; contagion; peer effects; |
| JEL: | C93 D03 D74 J15 |
| Date: | 2016–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp567&r=exp |
| By: | Mikhail Anufriev (Economics Discipline Group, University of Technology, Sydney); Te Bao (Department of Economics, Econometrics and Finance, University of Groningen); Angela Sutan (Burgundy School of Business); Jan Tuinstra (Amsterdam School of Economics and CeNDEF, University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | We present an experiment that investigates the effect of the fee structure and past returns on mutual fund choice. We find that subjects pay too little attention to the (periodic and small) operation expenses fee, but that the more salient front-end load is used as a commitment device and leads to lock-in into one of the funds. In addition we find that, even when subjects know that future returns are independent of past returns, these past returns are an important determinant of subjects’ investment choices. |
| Keywords: | Mutual fund choice, fee structure, experimental economics, return chasing |
| JEL: | C91 G02 G11 |
| Date: | 2015–04–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uts:ecowps:30&r=exp |
| By: | David P. Baron; Renee Bowen; Salvatore Nunnari |
| Abstract: | We present a laboratory experiment to study the effect of communication on durable coalitions – coalitions that support the same allocation from one period to the next. We study a bargaining setting where the status quo policy is determined by the policy implemented in the previous period. Our main experimental treatment is the opportunity for subjects to negotiate with one another through unrestricted cheap-talk communication before a proposal is made and comes to a vote. We compare committees with no communication, committees where communication is public and messages are observed by all committee members, and committees where communication is private and any committee member can send private messages to any other committee member. We find that the opportunity to communicate has a significant impact on outcomes and coalitions. When communication is public, there are more universal coalitions and fewer majoritarian coalitions. With private communication, there are more majoritarian coalitions and fewer universal coalitions. With either type of communication coalitions occur more frequently and last longer than with no communication. The content of communication is correlated with coalition type and with the formation and dissolution of durable coalitions. These findings suggest a coordination role for communication that varies with the mode of communication. |
| JEL: | C73 C78 C92 D71 D72 D78 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22821&r=exp |
| By: | Drupp, Moritz A.; Khadjavi, Menusch; Quaas, Martin F. |
| Abstract: | Understanding what determines the extent to which economic agents tell the truth to their regulating authority is of major economic importance, from banking to environmental protection. To this end, we examine truth-telling of German commercial fishermen in an artefactual field experiment. Their regulator, the European Union (EU), has recently enacted a ban on discarding unwanted fish catches to the sea, without yet increasing monitoring activities. The regulator thus depends on fishermen's truth-telling, while standard economic theory predicts substantial self-serving dishonesty. Using a coin- tossing task, we test whether truth-telling in a baseline setting differs from behavior in two treatments that exploit fishermen's widespread ill-regard of the EU. We find that fishermen misreport coin tosses to their advantage, albeit to a lesser extent than standard theory predicts. Misreporting is stronger among fishermen in a treatment where they are faced with the EU flag, suggesting that lying towards their ill-regarded regulator is more substantial. Yet, some fishermen are more honest in a control treatment where the source of EU research funding is revealed additionally. Our findings imply that regulators can influence truth-telling behavior by means of their regulatory approaches and communication strategies. |
| Keywords: | truth-telling,lying,field experiment,regulation,fishermen |
| JEL: | C93 D63 Q22 K32 K42 L51 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2063&r=exp |
| By: | Frik, Alisa; Gaudeul, Alexia |
| Abstract: | We investigate the decision of experimental subjects to incur the risk of revealing personal private information to other participants. We do so by using a novel method to generate personal information that reliably induces privacy concerns in the laboratory. We show that individual decisions to incur privacy risk are correlated with decisions to incur monetary risk. We find that partially depriving subjects of control over the revelation of their personal information does not lead them to lose interest in protecting it. We also find that making subjects think of privacy decisions after financial decisions reduces their aversion to privacy risk. Finally, surveyed attitude to privacy and explicit willingness to pay or to accept payment for personal information correlate well with willingness to incur privacy risk. Having shown that privacy loss can be assimilated to a monetary loss, we compare decisions to incur risk in privacy lotteries with risk attitude in monetary lotteries to derive estimates of the implicit monetary value of privacy. The average implicit monetary value of privacy is about equal to the average willingness to pay to protect private information, but the two measures do not correlate at the individual level. We conclude by underlining the need to know individual attitudes to risk to properly evaluate individual attitudes to privacy as such. |
| Keywords: | privacy,disclosure,risk,control,personal information,experiment |
| JEL: | C91 D81 O30 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cegedp:296&r=exp |
| By: | Werner Bönte (University of Wuppertal, Schumpeter School of Business and Economics; University of Wuppertal, Jackstädt Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research; Indiana University, School of Public & Environmental Affairs, Institute for Development Strategies); Sandro Lombardo (University of Wuppertal, Schumpeter School of Business and Economics); Diemo Urbig (University of Wuppertal, Schumpeter School of Business and Economics; University of Wuppertal, Jackstädt Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research; Indiana University, School of Public & Environmental Affairs, Institute for Development Strategies) |
| Abstract: | Economists and psychologists follow different approaches to measure individual competitiveness. While psychologists typically use self-reported psychometric scales, economists tend to use incentivized behavioral experiments, where subjects confronted with a specific task self-select into a competitive versus a piece-rate payment scheme. So far, both measurement approaches have remained largely isolated from one another. We discuss how these approaches are linked and based on a classroom experiment with 186 students we empirically examine the relationship between a behavioral competitiveness measure and a self-reported competitiveness scale. We find a stable positive relationship between these measures suggesting that both measures are indicators of the same underlying latent variable, which might be interpreted as a general preference to enter competitive situations. Moreover, our results suggest that the self-reported scale partly rests on motives related to personal development, whereas the behavioral measure does not reflect competitiveness motivated by personal development. Our study demonstrates how comparative studies such as ours can open up new avenues for the further development of both behavioral experiments and psychometric scales that aim at measuring individual competitiveness. |
| Keywords: | Competition, Experiment, Tournament scheme, Personal Development Motive |
| JEL: | C91 D03 M52 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwu:schdps:sdp16006&r=exp |
| By: | Mikhail Anufriev (Economics Discipline Group, University of Technology, Sydney); Te Bao (Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen); Jan Tuinstra (Amsterdam School of Economics and CeNDEF, University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | We run a laboratory experiment to study how people switch between several profitable alternatives, framed as mutual funds, in order to provide a microfoundation for so-called heterogeneous agent models. The participants in our experiment have to choose repeatedly between two, three or four experimental funds. The time series of fund returns are exogenously generated prior to the experiment and participants are paid for each period according to the return of the fund they choose. For most cases participants' decisions can be successfully described by a discrete choice switching model, often applied in heterogeneous agent models, provided that a predisposition towards one of the funds is included. The estimated intensity of choice parameter of the discrete choice model depends on the structure of the fund returns. In particular, it increases with correlation between past and future returns. This suggests people do not myopically chase past returns, but are more likely to do so when past returns are more predictive of future returns, a feature that is absent in the standard heterogeneous agent models. |
| Keywords: | Heterogeneuos agent models; discrete choice; switching; experiments |
| JEL: | C25 C91 D83 |
| Date: | 2015–09–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uts:ecowps:31&r=exp |