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on Experimental Economics |
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Issue of 2023‒07‒17
seventy papers chosen by |
| By: | Sivashankar, Pathmanathan; Huseynov, Samir; Duke, Joshua M. |
| Keywords: | Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335877&r=exp |
| By: | Eugenio Levi (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Piazza dell’Universita 1, 00139 Bolzano, Italy; Masaryk University, Czechia); Michael Bayerlein (German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), Ludwigkirchplatz 3-4, 10719 Berlin, Germany); Gianluca Grimalda (Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Kiellinie 66, 24105 Kiel, Germany); Tommaso Reggiani (Cardiff University, Colum Road CF103EU, Cardiff, UK; Masaryk University, Czechia; IZA, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Nowadays, immigration is a polarizing topic in politics. In this paper, we investigate how much this political polarization is driven by the depiction narratives made of immigrants vis-a-vis the natives. Furthermore, we look at whether polarization is rooted in private preferences over narratives or in how they are endorsed in public settings and social media. Our empirical strategy consists of a survey experiment in the 2021 German elections and a field experiment on Twitter in which we manipulate the “pinned tweets” of experimental users. To build our narratives, we manipulate either the policy position — hostile toward or accepting migration — or an emphasis on the out-group, on the in-group, or on economic reciprocity. We find that political polarization is driven both by the policy position and emphasis in narratives. On Twitter, the out-group emphasis drives supporters of different parties apart, and the corresponding hostile narrative becomes the only one going viral. In the survey, right-wing participants prefer the reciprocity emphasis more, but we still find evidence of more polarization when allowing the participants to go public. |
| Keywords: | immigration, narratives, political polarization, economic reciprocity, experiments, Twitter |
| JEL: | D72 D91 C93 |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mub:wpaper:2023-07&r=exp |
| By: | Lucia Del Carpio; Thomas Fujiwara |
| Abstract: | Gendered-grammar languages like Spanish are spoken by 39% of the world’s population. In a field experiment in partnership with a Spanish-speaking online platform for technology positions, ads randomly selected to use gender-neutral language receive a larger share of female applicants for non-remote positions in fields where female participation is not too low, and similar numbers otherwise. In a separate survey experiment, gender-neutral language in ads increases interest and beliefs about the suitability for the position and the advertiser’s culture of inclusion, with effects that are similar in magnitude to stating the job is remote and larger than explicit diversity statements. |
| JEL: | J16 J7 M14 Z13 |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31314&r=exp |
| By: | Marina Agranov; Jeongbin Kim; Leeat Yariv |
| Abstract: | The experimental literature on repeated games has largely focused on settings where players discount the future identically. In applications, however, interactions often occur between players whose time preferences differ. We study experimentally the effects of discounting differentials in infinitely repeated coordination games. In our data, differential discount factors play two roles. First, they provide a coordination anchor: more impatient players get higher payoffs first. Introducing even small discounting differentials reduces coordination failures significantly. Second, with pronounced discounting differentials, intertemporal trades are prevalent: impatient players get higher payoffs for an initial phase and patient players get higher payoffs in perpetuity afterward. |
| Keywords: | repeated games, discounting, intertemporal trade, experiments |
| JEL: | C73 C92 D15 D25 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10454&r=exp |
| By: | Paul M. Gorny; Petra Nieken; Karoline Ströhlein |
| Abstract: | We conducted a controlled experiment to study how different gender frames used in the instructions affect economic behavior. In our experiment, we systematically varied the framing of the instructions, either using the male, the female, or a gender-inclusive form. Participants played three standard economic two-player games measuring prosocial behavior. In particular, we elicited the degree of sharing, reciprocal behavior, and honest reporting. We investigated if participants behaved differently if their self-reported gender matched the grammatical gender used in the instructions. The results reveal that the framing of instructions had the strongest impact on sharing, and the effects were mainly driven by participants self-identifying as men. In contrast, we observe only mild treatment differences, if any, regarding reciprocal behavior or honest reporting. We discuss the potential mechanisms and consequences of our findings. |
| Keywords: | gender, gender inequality, gender stereotypes, grammatical gender, language, experimental methodology |
| JEL: | C91 D01 J16 Z13 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10458&r=exp |
| By: | Ankush Asri; Deepti Bhatia; Urs Fischbacher |
| Abstract: | We study caste-based discrimination in hiring practices of employers in a lab experiment in India. Students belonging to different castes are assigned the role of employees and employers. We test whether employers tend to discriminate in assessing the abilities of potential employees by varying employees access to education. Depending on the treatment, employers are presented information on actual performance, education and caste belonging of the employees. We find evidence for initial discrimination in favor of in-group by non-upper caste employers. However, this preference for in-group changes with time. Over time, as employers learn based on the experience gained in the experiment, they statistically discriminate in favor of upper caste employees. |
| Keywords: | Caste, discrimination, labour market outcomes, experiments |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:twi:respas:0127&r=exp |
| By: | Natalie Struwe; Esther Blanco; James M. Walker |
| Abstract: | We report novel results from changes in the marginal per capita return (MPCR) in a oneshot public good game where participants make a single provision decision. Data was collected using three “data collection processes”: an online experiment conducted on Prolific, an online experiment conducted with a subject pool of university students, and an experiment implemented following the conventional procedures of the economic laboratory with university students. In three between-subject treatment conditions, we confront participants from each of these three samples with either a low MPCR of 0.4, a high MPCR of 0.8 holding constant the individual endowment, or a high MPCR of 0.8 reducing the individual endowment to hold constant maximum possible group earnings. Based on a total sample size of 952 participants, we find that, unlike results from previous experiments where subjects make multiple contribution decisions in varying experimental designs, contributions to the public good are not different for the different MPCR conditions we study.We consider these results to be highly relevant in highlighting the limits to our understanding of cooperative behavior for settings without repeated interactions. |
| Keywords: | Voluntary contribution mechanism, Public goods, Marginal per capita return, Social dilemma, Experiments |
| JEL: | C91 C92 H41 |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2023-08&r=exp |
| By: | Ji, Jeong Hun; Park, Hyun Ju; Lee, Sang Hyeon |
| Keywords: | Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335615&r=exp |
| By: | Aubrac, Charlotte J.; Harou, Aurelie P.; Balasubramanya, Soumya; Magomba, Christopher; Vasilaky, Kathryn |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, International Development, Research Methods/Statistical Methods |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335545&r=exp |
| By: | Gulzar, Saad (Princeton University); Khan, Muhammed Yasir (University of Pittsburgh) |
| Abstract: | How can we motivate good politicians – those that will carry out policy that is responsive to citizens' preferences – to enter politics? In a field experiment in Pakistan, we vary how political office is portrayed to ordinary citizens. We find that emphasizing prosocial motives for holding political office instead of personal returns – such as the ability to help others versus enhancing one's own respect and status – raises the likelihood that individuals run for office and that voters elect them. It also better aligns subsequent policies with citizens’ preferences. We further find that social versus personal messaging only matters when randomly delivered in a public setting, suggesting that the extrinsic calculus is particularly important in candidacy decisions. Taken together, the results demonstrate that how politics is perceived in democracies shapes political entry as well as policy outcomes. |
| Keywords: | political selection, policy-making, state capacity |
| JEL: | O12 D72 H75 |
| Date: | 2023–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16176&r=exp |
| By: | Tobias Schütze; Philipp C. Wichardt; Philipp Christoph Wichardt |
| Abstract: | Many environment related public goods require investment of time or effort rather than simply money. Yet, most experimental studies on public good games focus on a distribution of money. In the present paper, we report results from an experiment (N=181) comparing an effort based public goods game (both in gain/loss frame) to a standard (gain/loss) public goods game. We find lower average contributions and more free-riders in the effort treatments. These differences are highly significant statistically and in terms of effects size; the most notable effect showing for men in the loss frame (comparing standard vs. effort, contributions drop from 76.7% to 17.0%, free-riders increase from 8.3% to 82.6%, full-contributors drop from 50.0% to 13.0%). The findings suggest that the provision of environmental public goods faces more impediments than common experimental findings indicate. Moreover, they suggest that especially men become more self-focused when required to mitigate a loss with effort. Given that many environmental public goods are about avoiding losses by taking action and that most political decision makers are still men, the latter result seems to be relevant from a policy perspective. |
| Keywords: | public goods, real effort, climate change, loss aversion, gender effects |
| JEL: | C91 D91 H41 Q54 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10444&r=exp |
| By: | Andersson, Henrik; Scholtz, Henrik; Zheng, Jiakun |
| Abstract: | This paper applies an experimental design developed by Bleichrodt et al. (2010) to test the key assumption of original regret theory (Loomes and Sugden, 1982): convexity of the regret function. We elicit preferences for financial and health outcomes for about 1, 000 subjects, yielding some evidence of minor dierences between financial domain and health domain. While aggregate results seem to support regret theory at first sight, individual-level analyses show that the majority of subjects violate the predictions of regret theory with a convex regret function. Our results thus challenge the predictive accuracy of regret theory as a descriptive theory of decision-making under risk. |
| Keywords: | Original regret theory; Decision under uncertainty; Utility measurement; Online experiments |
| JEL: | C91 D81 |
| Date: | 2023–06–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:128169&r=exp |
| By: | Sebastian Bachler; Sarah Lynn Flecke; Jürgen Huber; Michael Kirchler; Rene Schwaiger |
| Abstract: | Anthropogenic climate change is one of the most pressing global issues today and finding means of mitigation is of utmost importance. To this end, we investigate whether carbon taxes on their own and coupled with revenue recycling schemes (symmetric or asymmetric carbon dividends) improve cooperative behavior in a modified threshold public goods game of loss avoidance. We implement a randomized controlled trial on a large sample of the U.S. population and measure the portion of groups who successfully remain below a critical consumption threshold. We find that a carbon tax with symmetric dividends reduces harmful consumption levels, but coupling the tax with asymmetric dividends not only enhances consumption reduction but also significantly improves group cooperation in avoiding simulated climate change. Our results show that the application of a carbon tax and asymmetric carbon dividends reduces the failure rate to about one-fourth (6%), compared to the 22% observed in a baseline condition. We find that environmental attitudes, conservatism, education, and gender are significantly associated with success rates in staying below the threshold. |
| Keywords: | climate change, carbon pricing, carbon tax, carbon dividend, revenue recycling, cooperation |
| JEL: | C92 H23 H30 H41 Q54 |
| Date: | 2023–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2023-07&r=exp |
| By: | Brosig-Koch, Jeannette; Heinrich, Timo; Sterner, Martin |
| Abstract: | We ask how buyers can make use of bilateral communication in a procurement setting with moral hazard. We focus on a setting where buyers and potential sellers can exchange cheap-talk messages before trading and where the seller is determined via a buyer-determined procurement auction. In this type of auction, buyers can freely choose among bidders based on bidders’ observable characteristics and the prices they ask for. In a controlled laboratory experiment, we find that buyers use free-form text messages to make requests and to reduce social distance. The relationship between the offers sellers make and the messages they send is mediated by buyers’ requests. But, in general, buyers may increase their profits by choosing sellers who promise high quality or large profits. Furthermore, despite the cheap-talk nature of requests, buyers in our experiment increase their profits by specifically demanding high quality or large profits. |
| Keywords: | procurement auctions; bilateral communication; social distance; promises; requests; moral hazard |
| JEL: | C91 D44 D83 |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:117612&r=exp |
| By: | Anwar Adem; Richard Kneller; Cher Li |
| Abstract: | This study examines the influence of information constraints on firms’ efficiency in using digital technologies, focusing on business websites. Through two natural field experiments in the UK, we provide firms with benchmarked performance information on their websites. The experimental designs enable us to assess the salience of the information provided and heterogeneity linked to prior experience and catch-up potential. Our results indicate that performance gaps are not primarily driven by information constraints, as the treatment demonstrates a limited overall impact on motivating firms to improve, with a short-lived effect during the Covid-19 lockdowns. We further support these conclusions using data on website-building software and the number of page views. |
| Keywords: | field experiment, digital technologies, information constraints, performance management, efficiency |
| JEL: | O32 L25 C93 O33 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10457&r=exp |
| By: | Huber, Christoph; Dreber, Anna; Huber, Jürgen; Johannesson, Magnus; Kirchler, Michael; Weitzel, Utz; Abellán, Miguel; Adayeva, Xeniya; Ay, Fehime Ceren; Barron, Kai; Berry, Zachariah; Bönte, Werner; Brütt, Katharina; Bulutay, Muhammed; Campos-Mercade, Pol; Cardella, Eric; Claassen, Maria Almudena; Cornelissen, Gert; Dawson, Ian G. J.; Delnoij, Joyce; Demiral, Elif E.; Dimant, Eugen; Doerflinger, Johannes Theodor; Dold, Malte; Emery, Cécile; Fiala, Lenka; Fiedler, Susann; Freddi, Eleonora; Fries, Tilman; Gasiorowska, Agata; Glogowsky, Ulrich; Gorny, Paul M.; Gretton, Jeremy David; Grohmann, Antonia; Hafenbrädl, Sebastian; Handgraaf, Michel; Hanoch, Yaniv; Hart, Einav; Hennig, Max; Hudja, Stanton; Hütter, Mandy; Hyndman, Kyle; Ioannidis, Konstantinos; Isler, Ozan; Jeworrek, Sabrina; Jolles, Daniel; Juanchich, Marie; KC, Raghabendra Pratap; Khadjavi, Menusch; Kugler, Tamar; Li, Shuwen; Lucas, Brian; Mak, Vincent; Mechtel, Mario; Merkle, Christoph; Meyers, Ethan Andrew; Mollerstrom, Johanna; Nesterov, Alexander; Neyse, Levent; Nieken, Petra; Nussberger, Anne-Marie; Palumbo, Helena; Peters, Kim; Pirrone, Angelo; Qin, Xiangdong; Rahal, Rima Maria; Rau, Holger; Rincke, Johannes; Ronzani, Piero; Roth, Yefim; Saral, Ali Seyhun; Schmitz, Jan; Schneider, Florian; Schram, Arthur; Schudy, Simeon; Schweitzer, Maurice E.; Schwieren, Christiane; Scopelliti, Irene; Sirota, Miroslav; Sonnemans, Joep; Soraperra, Ivan; Spantig, Lisa; Steimanis, Ivo; Steinmetz, Janina; Suetens, Sigrid; Theodoropoulou, Andriana; Urbig, Diemo; Vorlaufer, Tobias; Waibel, Joschka; Woods, Daniel; Yakobi, Ofir; Yilmaz, Onurcan; Zaleskiewicz, Tomasz; Zeisberger, Stefan; Holzmeister, Felix |
| Abstract: | Does competition affect moral behavior? This fundamental question has been debated among leading scholars for centuries, and more recently, it has been tested in experimental studies yielding a body of rather inconclusive empirical evidence. A potential source of ambivalent empirical results on the same hypothesis is design heterogeneity—variation in true effect sizes across various reasonable experimental research protocols. To provide further evidence on whether competition affects moral behavior and to examine whether the generalizability of a single experimental study is jeopardized by design heterogeneity, we invited independent research teams to contribute experimental designs to a crowd-sourced project. In a large-scale online data collection, 18, 123 experimental participants were randomly allocated to 45 randomly selected experimental designs out of 95 submitted designs. We find a small adverse effect of competition on moral behavior in a meta-analysis of the pooled data. The crowd-sourced design of our study allows for a clean identification and estimation of the variation in effect sizes above and beyond what could be expected due to sampling variance. We find substantial design heterogeneity—estimated to be about 1.6 times as large as the average standard error of effect size estimates of the 45 research designs—indicating that the informativeness and generalizability of results based on a single experimental design are limited. Drawing strong conclusions about the underlying hypotheses in the presence of substantive design heterogeneity requires moving toward much larger data collections on various experimental designs testing the same hypothesis. |
| Keywords: | competition, moral behavior, metascience, generalizability, experimental design |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkie:272340&r=exp |
| By: | Herrington, Caitlin L.; Ortega, David L.; Maredia, Mywish K.; Reyes, Byron A. |
| Keywords: | Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, International Development |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335919&r=exp |
| By: | Gao, Yujuan; Ma, Yue; Mullally, Conner C. |
| Keywords: | Community/Rural/Urban Development, Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Institutional and Behavioral Economics |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335517&r=exp |
| By: | Hossain, Marzuk; Mahmud, Tahmid Bin; Rahman, Khandker Wahedur; Sulaiman, Munshi |
| Keywords: | Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession, International Development, Research Methods/Statistical Methods |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335631&r=exp |
| By: | Adam Zylbersztejn (Univ Lyon 2, Université Lumière Lyon 2, GATE UMR 5824, 69130 Ecully, France; research fellow at Vistula University Warsaw (AFiBV), Warsaw, Poland); Zakaria Babutsidze (SKEMA Business School, Université Côte d’Azur (GREDEG) and OFCE, Sciences Po Paris); Nobuyuki Hanaki (Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University); Astrid Hopfensitz (Emlyon Business School and GATE, Ecully, France) |
| Abstract: | Perceived beauty is one of the strongest predictors of perceived cooperativeness, causing the “beauty bias”. Through a large three-step incentivized behavioral and rating experiment (N=357), we study (1) the relevance of beauty ratings for predicting cooperativeness in an incentivized game and (2) the beauty bias in incentivized predictions of cooperativeness. We additionally (3) investigate if one’s beauty influences the beauty bias in predictions of cooperativenes of others. Our findings demonstrate the robustness of the beauty bias despite its irrelevance for making accurate predictions. We further observe that individuals are affected by the beauty bias irrespective of their beauty. Overall, the results highlight the importance of strong institutions that protect individuals from falling prey to the beauty bias. |
| Keywords: | cooperation, beauty, perception, hidden action game, experiment |
| JEL: | C72 D83 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:2309&r=exp |
| By: | Herrington, Caitlin L.; Maredia, Mywish K.; Ortega, David L.; Reyes, Byron A. |
| Keywords: | Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Research Methods/Statistical Methods, International Development |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335918&r=exp |
| By: | Fabienne Cantner (Technical University of Munich (TUMCS)); Christoph Drobner (Technical University of Munich (TUMCS)); Sebastian J. Goerg (Technical University of Munich (TUMCS, SOM)) |
| Abstract: | Behaving more sustainable has been shown to signal cooperativeness in social dilemmas. We investigate whether people exploit this apparent signaling value by in ating their intention to behave sustainably without changing their actual behavior. We explore this question in an online experiment in which participants self-report the importance of sustainability in their daily lives before engaging in a prisoner's dilemma game. Using a between-subjects design, we manipulate whether participants have the opportunity to adjust their self-reported sustainability scores after receiving instructions for the game. The results show that almost 30% of participants increase their sustainability scores in anticipation of higher transfers from their matched partners. However, this greenwashing strategy proves to be unsuccessful, as higher sustainability scores do not lead to higher transfers. |
| Keywords: | Greenwashing, Social Dilemma, Signaling, Sustainability |
| JEL: | C91 H41 Q50 |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aiw:wpaper:29&r=exp |
| By: | Rajan, Abhishek; Savchenko, Olesya; Prince, Candice; Leary, James |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Research Methods/Statistical Methods |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335956&r=exp |
| By: | Subhasish M. Chowdhury; Anastasia Danilov; Martin G. Kocher |
| Abstract: | A main goal of affirmative action (AA) policies is to enable disadvantaged groups to compete with their privileged counterparts. Existing theoretical and empirical research documents that incorporating AA can result in both more egalitarian outcomes and higher exerted efforts. However, the direct behavioral effects of the introduction and removal of such policies are still under-researched. It is also unclear how specific AA policy instruments, for instance, head-start for a disadvantaged group or handicap for the privileged group, affect behavior. We examine these questions in a laboratory experiment in which individuals participate in a real-effort tournament and can sabotage each other. We find that AA does not necessarily result in higher effort. High performers that already experienced an existing AA-free tournament reduce their effort levels after the introduction of the AA policy. Additionally, we observe less sabotage under AA when the tournament started directly with the AA regime. The removal of AA policies, however, significantly intensifies sabotage. Finally, there are no overall systematic differences between handicap and head-start in terms of effort provision or sabotaging behavior. |
| Keywords: | affirmative action, sabotage, experiment, tournament, handicap, head-start |
| JEL: | C72 C91 D63 D72 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10501&r=exp |
| By: | Bjørnshagen, Vegar (Norwegian Social Research Nova); Rooth, Dan-Olof (Stockholm University); Ugreninov, Elisabeth (Norwegian Social Research Nova) |
| Abstract: | This article examines disability discrimination in the hiring process and explores variation in how the intersection of disability and gender shapes employers' hiring behavior by occupational context and gender segregation. We use data from a field experiment in which approximately 2, 000 job applications with randomly assigned information about disability were sent to Swedish employers with vacancies. We find that nondisabled applicants receive 33 percent more callbacks than similarly qualified wheelchair users despite applying for jobs where the impairment should not interfere with performance. The results indicate no heterogeneity in levels of disability discrimination against men and women on average across occupations or by occupational gender segregation. However, levels of discrimination differ considerably among occupations, varying from no evidence of disability discrimination to discrimination against both disabled men and disabled women as well as cases where disability discrimination is found only against women or only against men. The results thus indicate that disability and gender interact and shape discrimination in distinct ways within particular contexts, which we relate to intersectional stereotyping and norms of gender equality influencing hiring practices but not to declared ambitions for diversity or gender equality legislation. |
| Keywords: | disability, hiring discrimination, gender, field experiment, correspondence study |
| JEL: | I14 J14 J23 J64 J71 |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16217&r=exp |
| By: | Wei, Xuan; McFadden, Brandon R.; Khachatryan, Hayk |
| Keywords: | Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Research Methods/Statistical Methods |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335465&r=exp |
| By: | Paul M. Gorny; Petra Nieken; Karoline Ströhlein |
| Abstract: | Social norms, though often implicit, are to a great extent communicated and made salient using natural language. They carry the notions that “the participant, ” “the customer, ” or “the worker” should behave in a certain way. In English, we refer to each of these personal entity nouns using the pronouns “he, ” “she, ” or the gender-inclusive singular “they.” In languages with grammatical gender, the nouns and the grammatical structure they are embedded in mark them as either male, female, or gender-inclusive. Little is known as to whether the framing of norms with respect to these grammatical genders affects norm compliance. We conducted an experiment in German with three games commonly used to study fair sharing, cooperation, and honesty. Our treatments allowed us to compare the differences in the increase of norm compliance when introducing prescriptive norms depending on the match between the participant’s self-reported gender and the gender frame used in the experimental instructions. Overall, we find no strong evidence that a match between the participant’s self-reported gender and the norm formulation led to a higher increase in norm compliance compared to the differences in a mismatch or gender-inclusive frame. We observed the strongest effect for men in the sharing game, where the data suggests that a match led to a higher increase in norm compliance compared to the increase if gender-inclusive formulations were used. This line of research has important implications for the effective communication of rules and norms in organizations and administrations. |
| Keywords: | norm compliance, gender in language, social identity |
| JEL: | C91 D01 J16 Z13 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10459&r=exp |
| By: | Jeong, Dawoon; Sesmero, Juan Pablo; Reeling, Carson |
| Keywords: | Resource/Energy Economics and Policy, Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Institutional and Behavioral Economics |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335840&r=exp |
| By: | Balietti, Anca; Budjan, Angelika; Eymess, Tillmann |
| Abstract: | Guided by a theoretical framework, we study how perceived relative income affects preferences for public goods. In a randomized survey experiment, we inform respondents from India of their official income rank and elicit preferences for air quality, including actual contributions to environmental initiatives. Right-wing supporters withdraw contributions when perceived relative income increases. The effect coincides with diminished health concerns and lower intentions to utilize private protection measures against air pollution. In contrast, center-left supporters do not reduce contributions. A second survey experiment demonstrates the causality of the relationship using a novel treatment that exogenously shifts relative income perceptions. |
| Keywords: | perceived relative income; voluntary contributions; public goods; air pollution |
| Date: | 2023–06–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:awi:wpaper:0729&r=exp |
| By: | Sesmero, Juan Pablo; Balagtas, Joseph V.; Wu, Steven Y.; Albert Scott, Francisco |
| Keywords: | Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Institutional and Behavioral Economics |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335854&r=exp |
| By: | Patricia Palffy; Patrick Lehnert; Uschi Backes-Gellner |
| Abstract: | To foster gender equality and diversity in the workplace, firms and policymakers strive to attract women and men to gender-atypical occupations. However, particularly for men, such attempts have been of limited success. We theorize (a) that identity threat-related barriers hinder gender-atypical occupational choices, (b) that these barriers differ for women and men, and (c) that therefore the success of policy interventions aiming to encourage gender-atypical occupational choices differs for women and men. We conduct a large-scale field experiment with young women and men choosing their occupations when applying for their first job. We find that a brief intervention featuring counter-stereotypical framing and female role models in typically male jobs in STEM substantially increases women's applications for STEM jobs. However, an equivalent intervention featuring counter-stereotypical framing and male role models in typically female jobs in health and care does not increase men's applications for those jobs. Thus, strategies that work for women - such as portraying role models - do not necessarily work for men. To foster full gender equality in the workplace, firms and policymakers should not only continue investing in interventions aiming to attract women to male-dominated occupations but also develop interventions particularly focused at encouraging men to consider female-dominated occupations. |
| Keywords: | occupational choice, gender typicality, occupational gender segregation, field experiment |
| JEL: | J24 J16 I24 M59 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0207&r=exp |
| By: | Kramer, Berber; Waweru, Carol; Malacarne, Jonathan G. |
| Keywords: | International Development, Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Labor and Human Capital |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335632&r=exp |
| By: | Abhijit Banerjee; Claudia Martinez A.; Esteban Puentes |
| Abstract: | We examine the impact of offering CCT beneficiaries the choice to receive subsidies in bank accounts instead of cash. We investigate the effects on savings behavior and downstream outcomes such as assets and trust. We find, on average, no significant impact on overall savings or downstream outcomes. However, among individuals with nonpositive balances prior to the offering, we observe an increase in balances in savings accounts and in the transactional accounts in which the subsidies were initially deposited. These findings underscore the potential of using bank accounts to encourage savings, particularly for individuals with limited prior savings. |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:udc:wpaper:wp548&r=exp |
| By: | Felix Chopra; Christopher Roth; Johannes Wohlfart |
| Abstract: | How do households adjust their spending behavior in response to changes in home price expectations? We conduct a field experiment with a sample of Americans that links survey data on home price expectations to actual spending behaviour as measured in a rich home-scanner dataset. In the experiment we exogenously vary households’ home price expectations by providing them with different expert forecasts. Homeowners do not adjust their spending in response to exogenously higher home price expectations, consistent with wealth effects and higher expected housing costs offsetting each other. However, renters reduce their spending in response to an increase in home price expectations. We provide evidence that the effects on renters operate through an increase in expected rental costs and higher expected costs of a future home that many renters intend to buy. Our evidence has implications for the role of asset price expectations in business cycle dynamics and consumption inequality. |
| Keywords: | consumption, expectations, home prices, homeowner, information, renter |
| JEL: | D14 D83 D84 E03 E21 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10450&r=exp |
| By: | Mathias Dolls; Paul Schüle; Lisa Windsteiger |
| Abstract: | We conduct a survey experiment among 18, 000 respondents in Germany to examine the determinants of support for rent control policies. Highlighting undesirable price and supply effects lowers respondents’ agreement with rent control, while pointing out that it can prevent displacement of low-income tenants increases agreement. However, while our treatments shift support for the policy into the hypothesized direction, the effect size decreases in misperceptions. Our results suggest that responsiveness to new information depends largely on prior beliefs, which affect perceived credibility and political neutrality of the received information. Mere information provision is therefore not sufficient to effectively alter policy views. |
| Keywords: | rent control, efficiency, redistribution, survey experiment |
| JEL: | D72 D83 D91 R21 R31 R38 P43 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10493&r=exp |
| By: | Patricia Justino; Marinella Leone; Pierfrancesco Rolla; Monique Abimpaye |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the causal impact of a randomized video intervention designed to study the determinants of parental time investments in early childhood among low-income parents. We designed and screened a video that provided information and conveyed persuasive messages about the importance of parental investments in early childhood. In a second video, we added a positive feedback message to parents about their accomplishments during their participation in an earlier parenting programme. |
| Keywords: | Child development, parental investment, Subjective beliefs, Technology, Human capital, Rwanda, Parenting programme |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2023-75&r=exp |
| By: | Gianmarco Daniele; Andrea F.M. Martinangeli; Francesco Passarelli; Willem Sas; Lisa Windsteiger |
| Abstract: | We present a theory linking political and social trust to explain trust erosion in modern societies. Individuals disagree on the seriousness of an externality problem, which leads to diverging policy opinions on how to solve it. This heterogeneity has two important effects on trust. First, disappointment with the policy rule enacted by the government breeds institutional distrust. Individuals that are more worried blame the government because the rule is too lenient. The less worried blame it even more because it is too intrusive. Second, as the rule also shapes individuals’ notion of civic behavior, it drives a wedge between what an individual expects from others and their actual behavior. This fuels social distrust. The more individuals are worried, the more they distrust others that are not complying with the rules. Our experimental survey conducted in four European countries shows how these trust dynamics came to the surface during the Covid-19 pandemic. Once led to think intensely about the virus, lower institutional trust was reported predominantly by respondents that were less worried about the virus, whereas social trust declined (more) for worried individuals. We lastly find that support for the welfare state erodes alongside sliding trust levels. |
| Keywords: | social trust, institutional trust, heterogeneity, externalities, regulation, survey experiment, Covid-19, climate change, welfare, taxation |
| JEL: | D70 D72 H30 O52 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10474&r=exp |
| By: | Esteban Freidin; Katrin Schmelz; Urs Fischbacher |
| Abstract: | Corruption is a severe impediment to economic development and societal cooperation. Fighting corruption is challenging, not least as it is intertwined with the rule of law. Thus, causal evidence on institutional conditions that amplify or protect from its negative externalities is hard to identify. In a laboratory experiment, we investigate how the effect of corruption on cooperation interacts with the rule of law, i.e., whether punishment rules protect cooperators. In a repeated public goods game, citizens can contribute, and an official can punish. We vary whether bribery is possible and whether high contributors are protected from punishment (strong rule of law) or not (weak rule of law). Bribery deteriorates cooperation only under a weak rule of law, but not when punishment rules protect high contributors from harassment bribery -- even if citizen-driven (collusive) bribery persists. Strong institutions limiting officials' power are crucial to protect from the societal costs of corruption. |
| Keywords: | bribery, cooperation, corruption, institutions, punishment, rule of law, development economics |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:twi:respas:0129&r=exp |
| By: | Costanigro, Marco; Dubois, Magalie; Gracia, Azucena; Cardebat, Jean-Marie |
| Keywords: | Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Agricultural and Food Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335798&r=exp |
| By: | Maredia, Mywish K.; Nakasone, Eduardo; Porter, Maria |
| Keywords: | International Development, International Development, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335931&r=exp |
| By: | Benjamin Monnery (EconomiX, Universite Paris Nanterre); Alexandre Chirat (EconomiX, Universite Paris Nanterre) |
| Abstract: | In Western democracies, recent decades have seen a transformation of the relationship between citizens and their representatives towards greater accountability, transparency, and anti-corruption efforts. However, such developments are sometimes suspected of paradoxically fueling populism and diminishing political trust. We investigate the extent to which a new public institution tasked with monitoring the integrity of elected officials is likely to attract popular support and restore citizens' trust in democracy. We focus on France and its main anti-corruption agency, the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP), set up in 2013. We run a survey among 3, 000 representative citizens and 33 experts, and augment it with an experimental treatment where we randomly provide simple, concise information on the HATVP's activity and track record. Our results first show a large divergence between the opinions of the average citizen and the more optimistic views of experts about the state and dynamics of political integrity in France. Second, we find that citizens have heterogeneous beliefs and that those most distrustful of politicians are not only more likely to vote for populist candidates or abstain, but are also the least informed about the anticorruption agency. Third, our information provision experiment has meaningful, positive impacts on citizens' perceptions of the HATVP, political transparency, and representative democracy. We show that some of the greatest impacts are found among initially distrustful and poorly informed citizens, underscoring the potential for communication and information to change the political perceptions and attitudes of disillusioned citizens. |
| Keywords: | corruption, integrity, political trust, populism, survey experiment |
| JEL: | C99 D72 M48 P37 |
| Date: | 2023–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:afd:wpaper:2301&r=exp |
| By: | Baehr, Tobias; Bernal Escobar, Adriana; Wollni, Meike |
| Keywords: | Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy, Research Methods/Statistical Methods |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335624&r=exp |
| By: | Peter Christensen; Paul Francisco; Erica Myers |
| Abstract: | Aligning compensation with recipient outcomes has the potential to improve the efficiency of government programs. We perform a field experiment to evaluate the impact of performance bonuses on the returns to spending in a large low-income energy efficiency assistance program. We find that performance-based bonuses dramatically increased program natural gas savings by 24%. The bonuses generate $5.39-$14.53 in social benefits for every dollar invested and increase the social net benefits from home-level weatherization more than two-fold. Contractors performing at high quality at baseline respond disproportionately to the incentives, suggesting that gains in the program's cost-effectiveness result from more efficient allocation of worker effort across workers who differ in their marginal effort cost. We do not find evidence of learning within the two-year study period or of increased deficiencies among non-incentivized tasks. |
| JEL: | H41 J0 Q4 Q50 |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31322&r=exp |
| By: | Wasserman-Olin, Rebecca; Gomez, Miguel I.; Schmit, Todd M.; Bjoerkman, Thomas |
| Keywords: | Marketing, Agribusiness, Risk and Uncertainty |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335520&r=exp |
| By: | Duran Gabela, Carlos F.; Sarasty, Oscar; Lamino Jaramillo, Pablo; Boren-Alpizar, Amy |
| Keywords: | Institutional and Behavioral Economics, International Development, Community/Rural/Urban Development |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335928&r=exp |
| By: | Ahmad, Sibbir; Jin, Songqing; Theriault, Veronique; Deininger, Klaus |
| Keywords: | Research Methods/Statistical Methods, International Development, Labor and Human Capital |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335897&r=exp |
| By: | Maredia, Mywish K.; Goeb, Joseph C.; Herrington, Caitlin L.; Zu, A Myint |
| Keywords: | International Development, Production Economics, International Development |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335823&r=exp |
| By: | von Schenk, Alicia; Klockmann, Victor; Bonnefon, Jean-François; Rahwan, Iyad; Köbis, Nils |
| Abstract: | People are not very good at detecting lies, which may explain why they refrain from accusing others of lying, given the social costs attached to false accusations — both for the accuser and the accused. Here we consider how this social balance might be disrupted by the availability of lie-detection algorithms powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Will people elect to use lie-detection AI that outperforms humans, and if so, will they show less restraint in their accusations? To find out, we built a machine learning classifier whose accuracy (66.86%) was significantly better than human accuracy (46.47%) lie-detection task. We conducted an incentivized lie-detection experiment (N = 2040) in which we measured participants’ propensity to use the algorithm, as well as the impact of that use on accusation rates and accuracy. Our results reveal that (a) requesting predictions from the lie-detection AI and especially (b) receiving AI predictions that accuse others of lying increase accusation rates. Due to the low uptake of the algorithm (31.76% requests), we do not see an improvement in accuracy when the AI prediction becomes available for purchase. |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:128163&r=exp |
| By: | Jason Shachat (Durham University Business School); Lijia Wei (School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University) |
| Abstract: | We present a hidden Markov model of discrete strategic heterogeneity and learning in first price independent private values auctions. The model includes three latent bidding rules: constant absolute mark-up, constant percentage mark-up, and strategic best response. Rule switching probabilities depend upon a bidder's past auction outcomes and a myopic reinforcement learning dynamic. We apply this model to a new experiment that varies the number of bidders and the auction frame between forward and reverse. We find the proportion of bidders following constant absolute mark-up increases with experience, and is higher when the number of bidders is large. The primary driver here is subjects' increased propensity to switch strategies when they experience a loss (win) reinforcement when following a strategic (heuristic) rule. |
| Keywords: | private value auction; discrete heterogeneity; learning; hidden Markov model; laboratory experiment |
| JEL: | D44 C72 C92 D87 C15 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:23-07&r=exp |
| By: | Gao, Long; McCallister, Donna; Williams, Ryan Blake |
| Keywords: | Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335667&r=exp |
| By: | Marcela Ibanez (University of Goettingen); Sebastian O. Schneider (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods) |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically examines the behavioral precautionary saving hypothesis that uncertainty about future income triggers an increase in saving because of loss aversion. Guided by the theoretical model of Koszegi and Rabin (2009), we first extend their theoretical analysis to also consider the internal margin, i.e., the strength, of loss aversion, and then empirically study the relation between income risk, experimentally elicited loss aversion, and precautionary savings. We do so using a sample of 640 individuals from the low-income population of Bogotá, characterized by limited financial education and subject to substantial income risk. In line with the theoretical predictions, we find that an increase in income risk is associated with higher savings for loss-averse individuals, and that this increase in savings grows with the degree of loss aversion. An accompanying laboratory experiment confirms that an exogenous increase in income risk causally leads to this observed pattern. Thus, consistent with the theoretical predictions derived from the model of Koszegi and Rabin (2009), but in contrast to common assumptions, our findings establish that loss aversion is not necessarily an obstacle to saving, and thus identify new approaches of increasing saving among individuals with low financial education. |
| Keywords: | Reference-dependent utility, expectations, consumption plans, precautionary savings, loss aversion, risk preferences, income risk, low-income, Bogotá, experiment |
| JEL: | D11 D14 D15 D81 D90 G40 J65 O16 |
| Date: | 2023–06–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2023_06&r=exp |
| By: | Maertens, Annemie; Wollni, Meike; Wei, Jaizhu; Li, Lingzhi; Zhou, Li |
| Keywords: | International Development, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335494&r=exp |
| By: | Gilligan, Daniel O.; Hirvonen, Kalle; Leight, Jessica; Tambet, Heleene; Tesfaye, Haleluya |
| Abstract: | The objective of this report is to present results from the baseline survey conducted as part of the Implementer-Led Evaluation and Learning (IMPEL) evaluation of SPIR II, a randomized controlled trial launched in 2022. The second phase of the Strengthen PSNP Institutions and Resilience (SPIR) Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) aims to enhance livelihoods, increase resilience to shocks, and improve food security and nutrition for rural households vulnerable to food insecurity in Ethiopia. The RFSA is situated within Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), one of the largest safety net programs in Africa. Funded by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), SPIR II is implemented by World Vision International (lead), CARE, and ORDA in the Amhara and Oromia regions of Ethiopia. The IMPEL SPIR II impact evaluation employs an experimental design with three arms, comparing two treatment combinations of livelihood and nutrition graduation model programming provided to PSNP beneficiaries relative to a control group receiving only PSNP transfers. The treatment assignment is randomized at kebele level in 234 kebeles. In the first arm (the control group), PSNP is implemented by the government with SPIR II support for the provision of cash and food transfers only (no supplemental programming). In the second arm, SPIR II programming is rolled out to PSNP beneficiary households in conjunction with nurturing care groups (NCGs) targeting enhanced infant and young child nutritional practices. In the third arm, PSNP beneficiary households receive SPIR II programming and NCGs, supplemented with additional targeted cash grants to pregnant and lactating women. |
| Keywords: | ETHIOPIA; EAST AFRICA; AFRICA SOUTH OF SAHARA; AFRICA; social protection; food security; resilience; households; poverty; children; nutrition; gender; women; credit |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:fprepo:136720&r=exp |
| By: | Evan Munro; David Jones; Jennifer Brennan; Roland Nelet; Vahab Mirrokni; Jean Pouget-Abadie |
| Abstract: | In online platforms, the impact of a treatment on an observed outcome may change over time as 1) users learn about the intervention, and 2) the system personalization, such as individualized recommendations, change over time. We introduce a non-parametric causal model of user actions in a personalized system. We show that the Cookie-Cookie-Day (CCD) experiment, designed for the measurement of the user learning effect, is biased when there is personalization. We derive new experimental designs that intervene in the personalization system to generate the variation necessary to separately identify the causal effect mediated through user learning and personalization. Making parametric assumptions allows for the estimation of long-term causal effects based on medium-term experiments. In simulations, we show that our new designs successfully recover the dynamic causal effects of interest. |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2306.00485&r=exp |
| By: | Barham, Tania (University of Colorado, Boulder); Cadena, Brian C. (University of Colorado, Boulder); Turner, Patrick S. (University of Notre Dame) |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates experimental impacts of a supported work program on employment, earnings, benefit receipt, and other outcomes. Case managers addressed employment barriers and provided targeted financial assistance while participants were eligible for 30 weeks of subsidized employment. Program access increased employment rates by 21 percent and earnings by 30 percent while participants were receiving services. Though gains attenuated after services stopped, treatment group members experienced lasting improvements in employment stability, job quality, and well-being, and we estimate the program's marginal value of public funds to be 0.64. Post-program impacts are entirely concentrated among participants whose subsidized job was followed by unsubsidized employment with their host-site employer. This decomposition result suggests that encouraging employer learning about potential match quality is the key mechanism underlying the program's impact, and additional descriptive evidence supports this interpretation. Machine learning methods reveal little treatment effect heterogeneity in a broad sample of job seekers using a rich set of baseline characteristics from a detailed application survey. We conclude that subsidized employment programs with a focus on creating permanent job matches can be beneficial to a wide variety of unemployed workers in the low-wage labor market. |
| Keywords: | subsidized employment, active labor market programs, randomized controlled trial |
| JEL: | J24 J68 I38 H43 |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16221&r=exp |
| By: | Iván Barreda-Tarrazona (LEE and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain); Agnès Festré (Ecole Universitaire de Recherche Economie et Management, Université Côte d'Azur, Nice, France); Stein Ostbye (School of Business and Economics, UIT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromso, Norway) |
| Abstract: | The social fabric, generally recognized as essential for economic and social transactions, is often referred to as Social Capital (SC). In this paper, we explore to what extent inexpensive survey data can be a substitute for more expensive experimental data as a metric of SC, using a cross-country design. We use data from two standard subject pools (located in Spain and France) and a mixed-method approach in the sense of presenting validated survey questions from the SC section of the latest wave of World Values Survey (WVS) to our participants, in addition to games for eliciting SC through actions and beliefs. Our data can be compared to publicly available WVS data at the relevant regional level as well as the national level. The main takeaway from our study is that SC measured by survey items consistently is higher in Spain than in France regardless of item and spatial resolution (nation, region, lab), whereas SC measured by choices and beliefs in incentivised games consistently is higher in France. This may confirm that there is reason for scepticism concerning the validity of survey measures in the context of social capital, not least since we, as opposed to in earlier studies, have data on group specific items used in the latest wave of WVS pertaining to trust in personal relations as well as more distant relations, all consistently pointing in the same direction regardless of spatial resolution. In this version of the paper we are concentrating on aggregates. Work remain to be done on the individual level. |
| Keywords: | social capital; mixed-method; cross-cultural; lab experiments |
| JEL: | Q12 C22 D81 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jau:wpaper:2023/03&r=exp |
| By: | Achyuta Adhvaryu; Emir Murathanoglu; Anant Nyshadham |
| Abstract: | We study the allocation and productivity consequences of training production line supervisors in soft skills via a randomized controlled trial. Consistent with standard practice for training investments within firms, we asked middle managers -- who sit above supervisors in the hierarchy -- to nominate members of their supervisory team for training. Program access was randomized within these recommendation rankings. Highly recommended supervisors experienced no productivity gains; in contrast, less-recommended supervisors' productivity increased 12% relative to controls. This was not due to poor information or favoritism. Instead, consistent with the fact that supervisor turnover comes at a large effort cost to middle managers due to gaps in coverage and onboarding, middle managers prioritized retention over productivity impacts. Indeed, treated supervisors were 15% less likely to quit than controls; this gain was most pronounced for highly recommended supervisors. Misallocation of training can help explain the persistence of low managerial quality in firms. |
| JEL: | J24 L23 M53 |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31335&r=exp |
| By: | Girum Abebe (World Bank,); Stefano Caria (University of Warwick); Marcel Fafchamps (Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University); Paolo Falco (University of Copenhagen); Simon Franklin (Queen Mary University of London); Simon Quinn (University of Oxford); Forhad Shilpi (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | We evaluate the impacts of a randomized job-fair intervention in which jobseekers and employers can meet at low cost. The intervention generates few hires, but it lowers participants’ expectations and causes both firms and workers to invest more in search as predicted by a theoretical model; this improves employment outcomes for less educated jobseekers. Through a unique two-sided belief-elicitation survey, we confirm that firms and jobseekers have over-optimistic expectations about the market. This suggests that, beyond slowing down matching, search frictions have a second understudied cost: they entrench inaccurate beliefs, further distorting search strategies and labour-market outcomes. |
| Keywords: | job-search strategy; recruitment; matching; expectations; beliefs; reser-vation wage; youth unemployment; Ethiopia |
| JEL: | O18 J22 J24 J61 J64 |
| Date: | 2023–06–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:958&r=exp |
| By: | David L. Dickinson |
| Abstract: | Dark personality traits have been linked to behaviors commonly understood as unethical, such as fraud, bribe-taking, and marital infidelity. Presumably, more “light” personality traits may be associated with lesser tendencies to be unethical, but many individuals also possess both light and dark trait characteristics. This paper reports results from a preregistered study of over 2400 participants who completed validated short-form personality instruments to assess dark and light personality trait measures—the dark tetrad and a light “triad” of 3 personality dimensions were measured. Furthermore, participants completed 3 tasks of interest that contribute to an understanding or one’s ethics: a task assessing prosociality, a task that presents a monetary temptation to be dishonest, and a hypothetical moral dilemma task. The results overall support the hypotheses that dark personality traits predict lower levels of prosociality, higher likelihood of dishonesty, and an increased willingness to make immoral choices overall. Potential mechanisms and implications are examined. Key Words: Ethics, dark personality, moral choice, experiments |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:apl:wpaper:23-04&r=exp |
| By: | Charles F. Manski |
| Abstract: | In medical treatment and elsewhere, it has become standard to base treatment intensity (dosage) on evidence in randomized trials. Yet it has been rare to study how outcomes vary with dosage. In trials to obtain drug approval, the norm has been to specify some dose of a new drug and compare it with an established therapy or placebo. Design-based trial analysis views each trial arm as qualitatively different, but it may be highly credible to assume that efficacy and adverse effects (AEs) weakly increase with dosage. Optimization of patient care requires joint attention to both, as well as to treatment cost. This paper develops methodology to credibly use limited trial evidence to choose dosage when efficacy and AEs weakly increase with dose. I suppose that dosage is an integer choice t ∊ (0, 1, . . . , T), T being a specified maximum dose. I study dosage choice when trial evidence on outcomes is available for only K dose levels, where K |
| JEL: | C44 I1 |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31305&r=exp |
| By: | Santhosh, Harikrishnan; Colson, Greg; Mullen, Jeffrey D. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource/Energy Economics and Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335804&r=exp |
| By: | Elisabeth Gsottbauer; Michael Kirchler; Christian König-Kersting |
| Abstract: | Climate change constitutes one of the major challenges to humankind in the 21st century. To address this crisis, it is necessary to transform the economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The finance industry has the potential to play a central role in this transformation by implementing sustainable investment and financing policies.We document climate mitigation preferences and attitudes toward the climate crisis of finance professionals — the key protagonists on financial markets — and climate experts — the key protagonists providing scientific findings. We use an incentivized choice experiment to measure the willingness to forgo individual payout to curb greenhouse gas emissions and survey participants to elicit their attitudes and beliefs toward the climate crisis. To learn how well both groups understand each other, we also ask participants what they believe the other stakeholder group believes. Our results provide suggestive evidence that finance professionals have a lower willingness to curb greenhouse gas emissions, measured through incentivized indifference valuations of carbon offsets, and are also less concerned about climate change compared to climate experts. Additionally, we find that the motivations and priorities of the two groups in addressing the climate crisis differ, with finance professionals being more driven by economic and reputational considerations and climate experts prioritizing the ecological and social consequences of the crisis. Finally, we find that finance professionals are less supportive of a carbon tax. Our findings have implications for policy and communication efforts, highlighting the importance of financial incentives and reputational concerns in motivating finance professionals to address the climate crisis. |
| Keywords: | Climate Crisis, Financial Professionals, Climate Experts, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Carbon Tax |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2023-06&r=exp |
| By: | Gisèle Umbhauer |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we study the 3-player beauty contest game. This 3-player guessing game has the same Nash equilibrium than the usual (large) N-player beauty contest game but it has also nice specific properties. To highlight these properties, we study classroom experiments on 2-player, 3-player and large N-player guessing games, both from a theoretical and behavioral point of view. The spirit of the paper is the spirit of the French newspaper Jeux et Stratégie which, in the early eighties, proposed the beauty contest game to his fun of logic readers. As a matter of facts, we wonder if it is possible to win the 3-player guessing game. So we show that, despite the 3-player beauty contest game has no weakly dominant strategy, it is possible to play it in a way that leads to win with a large probability, provided the parameter a is lower than 0.75. And we argue that playing 10 for a=0.6 ensures a large probability to win. |
| Keywords: | beauty-contest game, 3-player game, guess, nombre d’or, dominance, win area, behavioral heuristic. |
| JEL: | C72 C9 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2023-16&r=exp |
| By: | Jiang, Qi; Penn, Jerrod; Hu, Wuyang |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Institutional and Behavioral Economics |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335800&r=exp |
| By: | Lordan, Grace (London School of Economics); Lekfuangfu, Warn N. (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) |
| Abstract: | Occupational segregation is one of the major causes of the gender pay gap. We probe the possibility that individual beliefs regarding gender stereotypes established in childhood contribute to gendered sorting. Using an experiment with two vignette designs, which was carried out in schools in the UK, we consider whether students aged 15-16 years recommend that a fictitious peer pursue different college majors and career paths simply because of their gender. We find strong evidence that this is the case. The within-majors treatment design shows that our respondents are 11 percentage points more likely to recommend corporate law to a male peer. The across-majors design reveals that students presented with a male fictitious peer tend to recommend degrees that have lower shares of females to males. |
| Keywords: | sorting, gender stereotype, gender, vignette design, occupational choice, college major choice |
| JEL: | J24 |
| Date: | 2023–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16161&r=exp |
| By: | Pranjal Rawat |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of different payment rules on efficiency when algorithms learn to bid. We use a fully randomized experiment of 427 trials, where Q-learning bidders participate in up to 250, 000 auctions for a commonly valued item. The findings reveal that the first price auction, where winners pay the winning bid, is susceptible to coordinated bid suppression, with winning bids averaging roughly 20% below the true values. In contrast, the second price auction, where winners pay the second highest bid, aligns winning bids with actual values, reduces the volatility during learning and speeds up convergence. Regression analysis, incorporating design elements such as payment rules, number of participants, algorithmic factors including the discount and learning rate, asynchronous/synchronous updating, feedback, and exploration strategies, discovers the critical role of payment rules on efficiency. Furthermore, machine learning estimators find that payment rules matter even more with few bidders, high discount factors, asynchronous learning, and coarse bid spaces. This paper underscores the importance of auction design in algorithmic bidding. It suggests that computerized auctions like Google AdSense, which rely on the first price auction, can mitigate the risk of algorithmic collusion by adopting the second price auction. |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2306.09437&r=exp |
| By: | Galizzi, Matteo M (Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, and LSE Behavioural Lab, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK); Godager, Geir (Department of Health Management and Health Economics); Li, Jing (School of Pharmacy, University of Washington, USA); Linnosmaa, Ismo (Department of Health and Social Management, University of Eastern Finland and Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Finland); Tammi, Timo (Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland); Wiesen, Daniel (Department of Healthcare Management, and Center for Social and Economic Behavior (C-SEB), University of Cologne, Germany) |
| Abstract: | We propose a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical notions and empirical findings on altruism among physicians and other healthcare providers. While altruism in the behavioral and experimental economics literature is typically defined as a deviation from purely self-interested behavior, the theoretical health economics literature embeds the notion of physician altruism within the doctor–patient relationship. The altruism of physicians is typically defined as the weight in the doctor’s utility function attached to patient’s health benefits, besides the self-interested monetary considerations. We broadly group the empirical evidence into three main categories of evidence: evidence from (i) survey and interview data, (ii) prescriptions records, and (iii) behavioral experiments. Across each of those groups of studies and different methods, the evidence generally supports the theoretical notion that physicians behave ‘altruistically’ in their healthcare decisions. Some studies indicate, however, considerable heterogeneity in physicians’ altruistic preferences. |
| Keywords: | Altruism; healthcare providers; experimental evidence; structural estimation |
| JEL: | C91 D03 I10 |
| Date: | 2023–06–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:oslohe:2023_004&r=exp |
| By: | David L. Dickinson; Parker Reid |
| Abstract: | Little is known about how gamblers estimate probabilities from multiple information sources. This paper reports on a preregistered study that administered an incentivized Bayesian choice task to n=465 participants (self-reported gamblers and non-gamblers). The task elicits subjective probability estimates for a particular event given the base rate probability and new evidence information for that event, which allows for an assessment of one’s probability assessment accuracy. Furthermore, we also estimate the degree to which both sources of information are weighted in forming subjective probability estimates. Our data failed to support our main hypotheses that experienced online gamblers would be more accurate Bayesian decision-makers compared to non-gamblers, that gamblers experienced in games of skill (e.g., poker) would be more accurate than gamblers experienced only in non-skill games (e.g., slots), or that accuracy would differ in females compared to males. Pairwise comparisons between these types of participants also failed to show any difference in decision weights placed on the two information sources. Exploratory analysis, however, revealed interesting effects related to self-reported gambling frequency. Specifically, more frequent online gamblers had lower Bayesian accuracy than infrequent gamblers. Also, those scoring higher in a cognitive reflection task were more Bayesian in weighting information sources when making belief assessments. While we report no main effect of sex on Bayesian accuracy, exploratory analysis found that the decline in accuracy linked to self-reported gambling frequency was stronger for females. Decision modeling finds a decreased weight place on new evidence (over base rate odds) in those who showed decreased accuracy, which suggests a proper incorporation of new information into one’s probability assessments is important for more accurate assessment of probabilities in uncertain environments. Our results link frequency of gambling to worse performance in the critical probability assessment skills that should benefit gambling success (i.e., in skill-based games). Additional research is needed to better understand why a higher frequency of gambling is associated with lower Bayesian accuracy and why this association is greater in females compared to males. Key Words: Gambling, Bayes Rule, Probability Judgements, Cognitive Reflection |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:apl:wpaper:23-03&r=exp |
| By: | Irenaeus Wolff |
| Abstract: | Strategic behavior oft‰en diverges from Nash-equilibrium, in particular in unexperienced play. I provide data from a class of simple discoordination games and show that none of the popular models of behavioural game theory predicts the predominant aggregate choice patt‹ern. And yet, Noisy Introspection (Goeree and Holt, 2004) readily accounts for about half of the individual observations. Th‘e reason for the apparent paradox and the mismatch of the aggregate data and the models is a disregarded behavioural type that makes up about 25% of the population. Th‘ese 25% hold beliefs that peak in the centre of the option set and that are roughly symmetric. In addition, the players show a more heuristic process translating their belief into actions, as their choices cannot be explained readily by quantal responding. Th‘e behavioural patt‹ern of a ‘centered belief’ in connection with boundedly-rational decision-making is present also in another prominent game from the literature on behavioural game theory, the 11–20 game. Finally, I show that classifying players as ‘heuristic centered-belief types’ by one game’s beliefs has predictive power for behaviour in the other game. |
| Keywords: | Nash-equilibrium, quantal-response equilibrium, level-k, cognitive hierarchy, salience theory, noisy introspection, central-tendency bias. |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:twi:respas:0128&r=exp |
| By: | Peter Christensen; Adam Osman |
| Abstract: | Optimal transportation policies depend on demand elasticities that interact across modes and vary across the population, but understanding how and why these elasticities vary has been an empirical challenge. Using an experiment with Uber in Egypt, we randomly assign large price discounts for transport services over a 3 month period to examine: (1) the demand for ride-hailing services, (2) the demand for total mobility (km/week), and (3) its contributions to external costs (e.g. congestion). A 50% discount more than quadruples Uber usage and induces an increase of nearly 49% in total mobility. These effects are stronger for women, who are less mobile at baseline and perceive public transit as unsafe. Technology-induced reductions in the price of ride-hailing services could generate substantial benefits to users (4.3% of GDP) that would be accompanied by considerable increases in external costs (1% of GDP), with benefits accruing to the most affluent and costs being borne by the entire population. |
| JEL: | Q5 R4 |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31330&r=exp |