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on Neuroeconomics |
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Issue of 2020‒10‒05
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Serneels, Pieter (University of East Anglia); Dercon, Stefan (University of Oxford) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether aspirations matter for education, which offers a common route out of poverty. We find that mother aspirations are strongly related to the child's grade achieved at age 18. The relation is nonlinear, suggesting there is a threshold, and depends on caste, household income and the village setting. The coefficients remain large and significant when applying control function estimation, using first born son as instrument. A similar strong relation is observed with learning outcomes, including local language, English and maths test results, and with attending school, but not with attending private education. These results are confirmed for outcomes at age 15. The findings provide direct evidence on the contribution of mother aspirations to children's education outcomes and point to aspirations as a channel of intergenerational mobility. They suggest that education outcomes can be improved more rapidly by taking aspirations into account when targeting education programmes, and through interventions that shape aspirations. |
| Keywords: | education, aspirations, poverty |
| JEL: | I25 I21 D03 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13697&r=all |
| By: | NAKAMURO Makiko; ITO Hirotake |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the causal effects of computer-assisted learning on children's cognitive and noncognitive skills. We ran school-by-grade-level clustered randomized controlled trials at five public elementary schools in Cambodia. After confirming that the IQ scores of treated students significantly improved over just three months, we randomly reassigned those students either into treatment or control groups for an additional seven-month comparison. We find that students retain their cognitive skills during the additional seven-month treatment, but the initial gain diminishes for students who leave the program. Conversely, a meaningful effect on noncognitive skills is not detected immediately after the first three-month short-run program, but the effect appears to become significant and persists in the longer run. |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:20074&r=all |
| By: | Mads Kock Pedersen; Carlos Mauricio Casta\~no D\'iaz; Mario Alejandro Alba-Marrugo; Ali Amidi; Rajiv Vaid Basaiawmoit; Carsten Bergenholtz; Morten H. Christiansen; Miroslav Gajdacz; Ralph Hertwig; Byurakn Ishkhanyan; Kim Klyver; Nicolai Ladegaard; Kim Mathiasen; Christine Parsons; Michael Bang Petersen; Janet Rafner; Anders Ryom Villadsen; Mikkel Wallentin; Jacob Friis Sherson; Skill Lab players |
| Abstract: | Psychology and the social sciences are undergoing a revolution: It has become increasingly clear that traditional lab-based experiments fail to capture the full range of differences in cognitive abilities and behaviours across the general population. Some progress has been made toward devising measures that can be applied at scale across individuals and populations. What has been missing is a broad battery of validated tasks that can be easily deployed, used across different age ranges and social backgrounds, and employed in practical, clinical, and research contexts. Here, we present Skill Lab, a game-based approach allowing the efficient assessment of a suite of cognitive abilities. Skill Lab has been validated outside the lab in a crowdsourced population-size sample recruited in collaboration with the Danish Broadcast Company (Danmarks Radio, DR). Our game-based measures are five times faster to complete than the equivalent traditional measures and replicate previous findings on the decline of cognitive abilities with age in a large population sample. Furthermore, by combining the game data with an in-game survey, we demonstrate that this unique dataset has implication for key questions in social science, challenging the Jack-of-all-Trades theory of entrepreneurship and provide evidence for risk preference being independent of executive functioning. |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2009.05274&r=all |
| By: | Yagiz Özdemir; Björn Bartling; Ernst Fehr |
| Abstract: | The widespread use of markets leads to unprecedented material well-being in many societies. We study whether market interaction, as a side effect, erodes moral values. An encompassing understanding of the virtues and vices of markets, including their possible impact on moral values, is necessary to make informed decisions on the spheres in society where the allocation and incentive functions of markets should exercise their power, and where this may not be desirable. In a seminal and highly influential paper, Falk and Szech (2013) provide experimental data that seem to suggest that “market interaction erodes moral values.” Although we replicate their main treatment effect, we show that additional treatments are necessary to corroborate their conclusion. These treatments, however, reveal that repeated play and not market interaction causes the erosion of moral values. Our paper thus shows that neither Falk and Szech’s data nor our data support the claim that market interaction erodes moral values. |
| Keywords: | market interaction, moral values |
| JEL: | C91 D02 D62 D63 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8546&r=all |