|
on Experimental Economics |
|
Issue of 2019‒12‒09
thirty-six papers chosen by |
| By: | Schulz, Jonathan F. (George Mason University); Sunde, Uwe (University of Munich); Thiemann, Petra (Lund University); Thöni, Christian (University of Lausanne) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the selection into lab experiments among university students based on data from two cohorts of a university's first-year students. The analysis combines two experiments: a classroom experiment in which we elicited measures for risk, time, social preferences, confidence, and cognitive skills using standard measures from the experimental literature; and a recruitment experiment that varied information provided in a typical e-mail recruitment procedure for lab participants. In the recruitment experiment, students were randomly assigned to four conditions that highlighted altruistic motives or financial incentives. We find significant treatment effects: mentioning financial incentives boosts the participation rate in lab experiments by 50 percent. In terms of selection, we find that more selfish individuals and individuals with higher cognitive reflection scores are more likely to participate in experiments, but we find little evidence for selection along risk preferences, time preferences, and overconfidence. Although the recruitment conditions affect participation rates, they do not alter the composition of the participant sample in terms of behavioral measures and cognitive skills. |
| Keywords: | classroom experiment, selection, recruitment, preferences, cognitive abilities |
| JEL: | C93 D64 H41 L3 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12807&r=all |
| By: | Schulz, Jonathan (Department of Economics, George Mason University); Sunde, Uwe (Department of Economics, University of Munich); Thiemann, Petra (Department of Economics, Lund University); Thöni, Christian (Quartier UNIL-Dorigni, University of Lausanne) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the selection into lab experiments among university students based on data from two cohorts of a university’s first-year students. The analysis combines two experiments: a classroom experiment in which we elicited measures for risk, time, social preferences, confidence, and cognitive skills using standard measures from the experimental literature; and a recruitment experiment that varied information provided in a typical e-mail recruitment procedure for lab participants. In the recruitment experiment, students were randomly assigned to four conditions that highlighted altruistic motives or financial incentives. We find significant treatment effects: mentioning financial incentives boosts the participation rate in lab experiments by 50 percent. In terms of selection, we find that more selfish individuals and individuals with higher cognitive reflection scores are more likely to participate in experiments, but we find little evidence for selection along risk preferences, time preferences, and overconfidence. Although the recruitment conditions affect participation rates, they do not alter the composition of the participant sample in terms of behavioral measures and cognitive skills. |
| Keywords: | Keywords: classroom experiment; selection; recruitment; preferences; cognitive abilities |
| JEL: | C93 D64 H41 L30 |
| Date: | 2019–11–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2019_018&r=all |
| By: | Avdeenko, Alexandra; Bohne, Albrecht; Frölich, Markus |
| Abstract: | In this paper we investigate behavioral constraints to savings among smallholder farmers in rural Ethiopia. Increasing savings by overcoming such behavioral constraints has been documented to have positive effects on various outcomes such as health, education, and agricultural investments. We causally identify a strong increase in savings to a soft commitment device in the form of a moneybox with a regular savings plan. In our randomized field experiment, we also provide personalized feedback consisting of recommendations to self-set saving goals. These recommendations trigger increases in savings of up to 36 percent. In a detailed analysis of the behavioral characteristics driving these results, we find a strong and robust link between financial confidence and savings behavior. In particular, the savings of underconfident individuals are less than 2/3 of the savings of overconfident individuals - an association stronger than other behavioral traits such as risk-lovingness and present-biasedness. Remarkably, the effect of our personalized feedback is particularly strong for underconfident individuals. We discuss possible underlying mechanisms, rule out a set of alternative behavioral explanations, and address crowding-out behavior into other forms of saving. |
| Keywords: | Savings,Moneyboxes,Randomized Control Trial,Confidence |
| JEL: | O12 C93 D14 D91 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:19051&r=all |
| By: | Takunori ISHIHARA; Taro TOMIZUKA; Rei GOTO; Takanori IDA |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we discuss a field experiment for encouraging behavioral changes that could result in engagement in physical activity using two types of “nudges”: private information and social comparison information. In our experiment, the information provision group was notified solely about their own average step number. The social comparison group received information about their own average steps and a frequency distribution table describing both the relative ranking of each person and the distribution of steps in the group. Our findings are summarized as follows. First, we found the positive effects by private information and social comparison information. Second, we found the effect of social comparison in addition to information provision treatment was larger than the private information treatment only. Finally, we found the effects of treatments do not decrease or vanish during our experiment. |
| Keywords: | Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT), Physical Activity (PA), Information Provision, Social Comparison. |
| JEL: | C93 D91 I1 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kue:epaper:e-19-009&r=all |
| By: | Pierrot, Thibaud |
| Abstract: | An individual is affected by the curse of knowledge when he fails to appreciate the viewpoint of a lesser-informed agent. In contrast to a rational person, the cursed individual behaves as if part of his private information were common knowledge. This systematic cognitive bias alters many predictions derived from game theory which involve an asymmetry of information between the players. We investigate in this article how the curse of knowledge modifies individual behaviours in negotiation situations. We report the results of a laboratory experiment that was designed to isolate the effect of the curse of knowledge by varying the information available to the players ceteris paribus. Our analysis of the expectations and choices of subjects playing the ultimatum game in different information settings indicates that the curse of knowledge can lead to an increase of impasses in the negotiation and partially explains empirically observed phenomenons such as abnormally high rates of bargaining failures. Unlike previous behavioural research, that is mostly based on motivated beliefs and actions, this work provides a purely nonstrategic explanation for negotiation impasses observed in many real life situations. |
| Keywords: | curse of knowledge,hindsight bias,negotiation,experiments |
| JEL: | C91 D80 D82 D83 D84 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2019211r&r=all |
| By: | Auriol, Emmanuelle; Delissaint, Diego; Fourati, Maleke; Miquel-Florensa, Josepa; Seabright, Paul |
| Abstract: | We conducted an experimental study in Haiti testing for the relationship between religious belief and individual risk taking behavior. 774 subjects played lotteries in a standard neutral protocol and subsequently with reduced endowments but in the presence of religious images of Catholic, Protestant and Voodoo tradition. Subjects chose between paying to play a lottery with an image of their choice, and saving their money to play with no image. Those who chose the former are dened as image buyers and those who chose the latter as non-buyers. Image buyers, who tend to be less educated, more rural, and to exhibit greater religiosity, bet more than non-buyers in all games. In addition, in the presence of religious images all participants took more risk, and buyer took more risk when playing in the presence of their chosen images than when playing with other images. We develop a theoretical model calibrated with our experimental data to explore the channels through which religious images might aect risk-taking. Our results suggest that the presence of images tends to increase individuals' subjective probability of winning the lottery, and that subjects therefore believe in a god who intervenes actively in the world in response to their requests. |
| Keywords: | Risk preferences; Religion; Field Experiment |
| JEL: | C93 D81 Z12 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:123740&r=all |
| By: | Goette, Lorenz; Stutzer, Alois (University of Basel) |
| Abstract: | There is a longstanding concern that material rewards might undermine pro-social motivations, thereby leading to a decrease in blood donations. This paper provides an empirical test of how material rewards affect blood donations in a three-month large-scale field experiment and a fifteen-month follow-up period, involving more than 10,000 previous donors. We examine the efficacy of a lottery ticket as a reward vis-à-vis a standard invitation, an appeal, and a free cholesterol test. The offer of a lottery ticket, on average, increases the probability to donate blood during the experiment by 5.6 percentage points over a baseline donation rate of 46 percent. We find that this effect is driven by less motivated donors. Moreover, no reduction in donations is observed after the experiment. |
| Keywords: | blood donations; field experiment; material rewards; motivation crowding effect; pro-social behavior |
| JEL: | C93 D64 H41 I18 |
| Date: | 2019–11–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2019/20&r=all |
| By: | John List (University of Chicago); James Murphy (University of Alaska Anchorage); Michael Price (University of Alabama); Alexander James (University of Alaska Anchorage) |
| Abstract: | We partnered with Alaska’s Pick.Click.Give. Charitable Contributions Program to implement a statewide natural field experiment with 540,000 Alaskans designed to explore whether targeted appeals emphasizing donor benefits through warm glow impact donations. Results highlight the relative import of appeals to self. Individuals who received such an appeal were 4.5 percent more likely to give and gave 20 percent more than counterparts in the control group. Yet, a message that instead appealed to recipient benefits had no effect on average donations relative to the control group. We also find evidence of long-run effects of warm glow appeals in the subsequent year. |
| Keywords: | field experiment, experimental economics, charitable giving, philanthropy, warm glow, nonprofits, altruism, Alaska, Permanent Fund Dividend |
| JEL: | C93 D01 D64 D91 H41 L30 L38 M31 M37 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ala:wpaper:2019-07&r=all |
| By: | Maria Vittoria Levati (Department of Economics (University of Verona)); Chiara Nardi (Department of Economics (University of Verona)) |
| Abstract: | Following a recent recommendation by Transparency International, we set up a controlled laboratory experiment to gauge the impact of a specific type of grassroots participation on petty corruption. Participants play a simple one-shot, three-person bribery game which, depending on the treatment, either gives or does not give passive third parties who suffer from corruption the opportunity to send a publicly visible message to the potential bribers and bribees. We find that bribes are less likely to be offered in the presence of messaging opportunities. This may be attributed to an increase in the bribe-givers' non-monetary costs of acting corruptly. However, messaging opportunities have no effect on bribe acceptances. We provide a theoretical justification for this null effect, based on the bribe-takers' beliefs that the passive parties inherently value the chance to have a voice. |
| Keywords: | Petty corruption, Bribery game, Communication, Experiments |
| JEL: | D73 C92 D02 D91 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ver:wpaper:18/2019&r=all |
| By: | Bayindir, Esra E.; Gurdal, Mehmet Y.; Ozdogan, Ayca; Saglam, Ismail |
| Abstract: | We present a theoretical and experimental study of three Cheap Talk games, each having two senders and one receiver. The communication of senders is simultaneous in the first game, sequential in the second game and determined by the receiver in the third game (the Choice Game). We find that the overcommunication phenomenon observed in similar settings with only one sender becomes insignificant in our two-sender model regardless of the mode of communication. Despite similar theoretical predictions for these games, we observe systematic differences in experiments. In particular, while non-conflicting messages are observed less frequently under sequential communication due to the tendency of the second sender to revert the message of the first sender, the frequency of the second sender being truthful when the first sender lies is considerably higher in the Sequential Game in comparison to the truth-telling level in the Simultaneous Game. Moreover, in the Choice Game receiver prefers simultaneous mode of communication slightly more often than the sequential one. We explain the observed behavior of the players, estimating a logit quantal response equilibrium model and additionally running some logistic regressions. We find that the mode of communication is critical in design problems where a second opinion is available. |
| Keywords: | Strategic information transmission; truth-telling; trust; sender-receiver game. |
| JEL: | C72 C90 D83 |
| Date: | 2019–11–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:97152&r=all |
| By: | Assenza, Tiziana; Cardaci, Alberto; Delli Gatti, Dominico |
| Abstract: | By means of a laboratory experiment, we show that, contrary to standard consumer theory, financially equivalent balance sheet profiles may be perceived as non fungible in a controlled frictionless environment with no probabilistic attributes. A large majority of subjects indeed have a bias in the perception of wealth, such that balance sheet composition matters: for a given net worth with values of assets and debt that are financially certain and risk-free, a greater asset-debt ratio implies greater perceived wealth. The predominance of this bias is explained by low cognitive sophistication and great inattention. Moreover, biased subjects are less patient, less debt averse, more likely to increase spending out of unexpected gains and report greater propensities to consume. A standard optimal consumption choice model, enriched with a rational but inattentive agent à la Gabaix (2014, 2019), aligns our key experimental findings. |
| Keywords: | perceived wealth; cognitive sophistication; behavioral inattention; laboratory; experiment; household debt; consumption |
| JEL: | C91 D91 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:123746&r=all |
| By: | Pfaff, Steven; Crabtree, Charles; Kern, Holger L.; Holbein, John B. |
| Abstract: | Despite growing descriptive evidence of discrimination against minority religious groups and atheists in the United States, little experimental work exists studying whether individuals face differential barriers to receiving public services depending on their religious affiliation. Here we report results from a large-scale audit study of street-level bureaucrats in the American public school system. We emailed the principals of more than 45,000 public schools and asked for a meeting, randomly assigning the religious affiliation/non-affiliation of the family. To get at potential mechanisms, we also randomly assigned belief intensity. We find evidence of substantial discrimination against Muslims and atheists. These individuals are substantially less likely to receive a response, with discrimination growing when they signal that their beliefs are more intense. Protestants and Catholics face no discrimination unless they signal that their religious beliefs are intense. Our ?findings suggest that minority religious groups and atheists face important barriers to equal representation in the public arena. |
| Date: | 2018–08–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:9khds&r=all |
| By: | Imen Bouhlel (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS); Michela Chessa (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS); Agnès Festré (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS); Eric Guerci (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS) |
| Abstract: | Information search and opinion formation are central aspects of decision making in consumers choices. Indeed, before taking a decision, the alternatives among which the rational choice will be made should be clearly valued. In standard economic theory, the search dynamics is generally neglected because the process is assumed to be carried out without any cost or without spending time. However, whenever only a significant collection of experience can provide the bulk of relevant information to make the best choice, as it is the case for experience goods (Nelson, 1970), some engendered costs in collecting such information might be considered. Our paper lies on a conceptual framework for the analysis of an individual sequential search task among a finite set of alternatives. This framework is inspired by both the Secretary problem (Ferguson et al., 1989) and the multi-armed bandit problem (Robbins, 1952). We present a model where an individual is willing to locate the best choice among a set of alternatives. The total amount of time for searching is finite and the individual aims at maximizing the expected payoff given by an exploration-exploitation trade-off: a first phase for exploring the value of new alternatives, and a second phase for exploiting her past collected experience. The task involves an iterative exploitation - i.e., where the final payoff does not only depend on the value of the chosen alternative, but also on the remaining time that has not been dedicated to exploration -. Given the finite horizon of time, the optimal stopping strategy can be assimilated to a satisficing behavior (Simon, 1956). We manipulate the degree of certainty of information, and we find that the optimal stopping time is later under the uncertain information condition. We experimentally test the model’s predictions and find a tendency to oversearch when exploration is costly, and a tendency to undersearch when exploration is relatively cheap. We also find under the certain information condition that participants learn to converge towards the optimal stopping time, but this learning effect is less present under the uncertain information condition. Regret and anticipation lead to more exploration under both information conditions. A gender effect is also exhibited with women tending to explore more than men. |
| Keywords: | Optimal-stopping, Exploration-exploitation trade-off, Regret, Experiment |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2019-40&r=all |
| By: | DeJarnette, Patrick; Dillenberger, David; Gottlieb, Daniel; Ortoleva, Pietro |
| Abstract: | We study preferences over lotteries in which both the prize and the payment date are uncertain. In particular, a time lottery is one in which the prize is fixed but the date is random. With Expected Discounted Utility, individuals must be risk seeking over time lotteries (RSTL). In an incentivized experiment, however, we find that almost all subjects violate this property. Our main contributions are theoretical. We first show that within a very broad class of models, which includes many forms of non-Expected Utility and time discounting, it is impossible to accommodate even a single violation of RSTL without also violating a property we termed Stochastic Impatience, a risky counterpart of standard Impatience. We then offer two positive results. If one wishes to maintain Stochastic Impatience, violations of RSTL can be accommodated by keeping Independence within periods while relaxing it across periods. If, instead, one is willing to forego Stochastic Impatience, violations of RSTL can be accommodated with a simple generalization of Expected Discounted Utility, obtained by imposing only the behavioral postulates of Discounted Utility and Expected Utility. |
| Keywords: | Time Lotteries; Stochastic Impatience; Risk and Time preferences; Expected Discounted Utility |
| JEL: | C91 C81 D90 |
| Date: | 2019–11–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:102564&r=all |
| By: | Eugen Dimant (University of Pennsylvania); Gerben A. van Kleef (University of Amsterdam); Shaul Shalvi (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | We examine framing effects in nudging honesty in the spirit of the growing norm-nudge literature by utilizing a high-powered and pre-registered study. Across four treatments, participants received one random truthful norm-nudge that emphasized 'moral suasion' based on either what other participants previously did (empirical message) or approved of doing (normative message) and varied in the framing (positive or negative) in which it was presented. Subsequently, participants repeatedly played the 'mind game' in which they were first asked to think of a number, then roll a digital die, and then reported whether the two numbers coincide, in which case a bonus was paid. Hence, whether or not the report was truthful remained unobservable to the experimenters. We find compelling null effects with tight confidence intervals showing that none of the norm-nudge interventions worked. A follow-up experiment reveals the reason for these convincing null-effects: the information norm-nudges did not actually change norms. Notably, our secondary results suggest that a substantial portion of individuals misremembered norm-nudges such that they conveniently supported deviant behavior. This subset of participants indeed displayed significantly higher deviance levels, a behavior pattern in line with literature on motivated misremembering and belief distortion. We discuss the importance of this high-powered null finding for the flourishing norm-nudge literature and derive policy implications. |
| Keywords: | Norm-Nudges, Nudge, Social Information, Social Norms |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2019-14&r=all |
| By: | Julia Rose; Michael Kirchler; Stefan Palan |
| Abstract: | Status and reputation concerns are conjectured to be important especially in markets with information asymmetries between buyers and sellers, such as in credence goods markets. To investigate the effects of status and reputation on reciprocal behavior of sales personnel in a financial credence goods market, we run a natural field experiment. We send e-mail requests to insurance brokers asking for an appointment. We find that status nudging and, with a larger effect size, reputation nudging in the e-mails increase brokers' response rates compared to a neutral request. Both effects are robust across all responses, only counting affirmative responses, and in urban and rural areas. |
| Keywords: | Insurance brokers, natural field experiment, credence goods, status, reputation |
| JEL: | C93 G22 D12 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2019-20&r=all |
| By: | Maria Cotofan (Erasmus University Rotterdam) |
| Abstract: | Non-monetary incentives such as praise are common-place, but their effects on workers performing cognitively-complex tasks remain largely unknown. I expand the teacher incentive literature through a field experiment measuring how repeated public praise for the best teachers impacts teacher performance. Testing different mechanisms, I argue that public praise sends a comparative message, with teachers being motivated when praised and becoming discouraged when not praised. In treated schools, teachers who are unexpectedly praised perform better and teachers who are not perform worse. The positive effect of unexpected praise is persistent and reflects real student learning. The negative effect disappears over time. |
| Keywords: | public praise, teacher incentives, field experiment |
| JEL: | M52 C93 I21 J3 J45 J53 |
| Date: | 2019–12–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20190082&r=all |
| By: | Gruener, Sven |
| Abstract: | Clinical studies and economic experiments are often conducted utilizing randomized controlled trials. In contrast to clinical drug trials, sample size calculation has rarely been carried out by experimental economists. Using simple examples for illustration purposes, I discuss pros and cons of using sample size calculations in experimental economics. |
| Date: | 2018–07–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:43zbg&r=all |
| By: | Hupé, Jean-Michel |
| Abstract: | In the wake of financial scandals, Cohn and collaborators published a headline-grabber study in the field of behavioral economics. M.C. Villeval (2014) summarized the main message as follows, in News and Views of the Nature issue where the Cohn study was published: the “experiment shows that although bank employees behave honestly on average, their dishonesty increases when they make decisions after having been primed to think about their professional identity.” Cohn et al. thus provide evidence that “the incentives and the business culture developed in the financial sector may undermine the honesty norms of ordinary employees.” This study may have important consequences for policy, since, Villeval continues, “it is crucial to ensure a business culture of honesty in this industry to restore trust in it.” Villeval also argues that “from a scientific perspective, this study […] supports the economic theory of social identity […], links this theory with the economic analysis of lying behavior [… and] shows how behavioural economists can contribute to a broader reflection in science about how people manage their 'multiple selves' ”. Here I show that the use of flawed statistics methods, yet employed routinely in so-called “evidence-based” science, led the authors to distort the “evidence”. I am also using this data-set as an interesting example to explore how we can use modeling and simulations to provide a fair account of the information and uncertainty conveyed by the data, based on Confidence Intervals. I provide the R-code. Based on this paper, I question the contribution of behavioral economics to the understanding of human behavior and conclude with considerations on honesty and science. |
| Date: | 2018–03–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:nt6xk&r=all |
| By: | Gruener, Sven |
| Abstract: | This note deals with baseline comparisons in randomized controlled trials in economics. Although widely spread in the literature, resorting to p-values is an inadequate procedure to assess whether randomization was successfully carried out. Instead, it is promising to use standardized differences. In addition, challenges to evaluate the quality of randomization appear if self-selection is systematically different across the com-pared treatments. |
| Date: | 2018–08–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:xwju8&r=all |
| By: | Javdani, Mohsen (University of British Columbia, Okanagan); Chang, Ha-Joon (University of Cambridge) |
| Abstract: | There exists a long-standing debate about the influence of ideology in economics. Surprisingly, however, there is no concrete empirical evidence to examine this critical issue. Using an online randomized controlled experiment involving 2425 economists in 19 countries, we examine the effect of ideological bias on views among economists. Participants were asked to evaluate statements from prominent economists on different topics, while source attribution for each statement was randomized without participants' knowledge. For each statement, participants either received a mainstream source, an ideologically different less-/non-mainstream source, or no source. We find that changing source attributions from mainstream to less-/non-mainstream, or removing them, significantly reduces economists' reported agreement with statements. This contradicts the image economists have of themselves, with 82% of participants reporting that in evaluating a statement one should only pay attention to its content. Using a framework of Bayesian updating we examine two competing hypotheses as potential explanations for these results: unbiased Bayesian updating versus ideologically-/authority-biased Bayesian updating. While we find no evidence in support of unbiased updating, our results are consistent with biased Bayesian updating. More specifically, we find that changing/removing sources (1) has no impact on economists' reported confidence with their evaluations; (2) similarly affects experts/non-experts in relevant areas; and (3) has substantially different impacts on economists with different political orientations. Finally, we find significant heterogeneity in our results by gender, country, PhD completion country, research area, and undergraduate major, with patterns consistent with the existence of ideological bias. |
| Keywords: | ideology, ideological bias, authority bias, Bayesian updating, views among economists |
| JEL: | A11 A14 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12738&r=all |
| By: | Masclet, David (University of Rennes); Dickinson, David L. (Appalachian State University) |
| Abstract: | We present a framework that incorporates both moral motivations and fairness considerations into utility. The main idea is that individuals face a preference trade-off between their material individual interest and their desire to follow moral norms. In our model, we assume that moral motivation is conditional and may be influenced by others' actions. Specifically, in our framework moral obligation is a combination of two main components: an autonomous component and a social influence component that captures the influence of others. Our framework is able to explain many stylized results in the literature and to improve theories of economic behavior. |
| Keywords: | fairness, ethical decision making, moral motivation, behavioral economics |
| JEL: | B3 D6 D9 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12782&r=all |
| By: | Despoina Alempaki (University of Warwick); Andrew M Colman (University of Leicester); Felix Koelle (University of Cologne); Graham Loomes (University of Warwick); Briony D Pulford (University of Leicester) |
| Abstract: | In experimental games, a substantial minority of players often fail to best respond. Using two-person 3x3 one-shot games, we investigated whether ‘structuring’ the pre-decision deliberation process produces greater consistency between individuals’ stated values and beliefs on the one hand and their choice of action on the other. Despite this intervention, only just over half of strategy choices constituted best responses. Allowing for risk aversion made little systematic difference. Distinguishing between players according to their other-regarding preferences made a statistically significant difference, but best response rates increased only marginally. It may be that some irreducible minimum level of noise/imprecision generates some proportion of sub-optimal choices. If so, more research might usefully be directed towards competing models of stochastic strategic choice. |
| Keywords: | game theory; best response; strategic thinking; social preferences; stated beliefs |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2019-13&r=all |
| By: | Alger, Ingela; Weibull, Jörgen W.; Van Leeuwen, Boris |
| Abstract: | Recent theoretical work suggests that a form of Kantian morality has evolutionary foundations. To investigate the relative importance of Kantian morality and social preferences, we run laboratory experiments on strategic interaction in social dilemmas. Using a structural model, we estimate social preferences and morality concerns both at the individual level and the aggregate level. We observe considerable heterogeneity in social preferences and Kantian morality. A finite mixture analysis shows that the subject pool is well described as consisting of two types. One exhibits a combination of inequity aversion and Kantian morality, while the other combines spite and Kantian morality. |
| JEL: | C49 C72 C9 C91 D03 D84 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:iastwp:123761&r=all |
| By: | Alger, Ingela; Van Leeuwen, Boris; Weibull, Jörgen W. |
| Abstract: | Recent theoretical work suggests that a form of Kantian morality has evolutionary foundations. To investigate the relative importance of Kantian morality and social preferences, we run laboratory experiments on strategic interaction in social dilemmas. Using a structural model, we estimate social preferences and morality concerns both at the individual level and the aggregate level. We observe considerable heterogeneity in social preferences and Kantian morality. A finite mixture analysis shows that the subject pool is well described as consisting of two types. One exhibits a combination of inequity aversion and Kantian morality, while the other combines spite and Kantian morality. |
| JEL: | C49 C72 C9 C91 D03 D84 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:123762&r=all |
| By: | Jordan van Rijn; Esteban J. Quiñones; Bradford L. Barham |
| Abstract: | This study uses a dictator game with a charitable organization as the donation recipient to test whether empathic concern explains persistent gender differences in charitable giving. |
| Keywords: | Charitable behavior, Dictator games, Gender, Empathy, Inequality aversion, Guilt Appeal, Not-for-profit marketing, International development |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:bd7b6281a24a4fba8acfd07b61fd8294&r=all |
| By: | David Masclet; David L. Dickinson |
| Abstract: | We present a framework that incorporates both moral motivations and fairness considerations into utility. The main idea is that individuals face a preference trade-off between their material individual interest and their desire to follow moral norms. In our model, we assume that moral motivation is conditional and may be influenced by others’ actions. Specifically, in our framework moral obligation is a combination of two main components: an autonomous component and a social influence component that captures the influence of others. Our framework is able to explain many stylized results in the literature and to improve theories of economic behavior. Key Words: Fairness, Ethical Decision Making, Moral Motivation, Behavioral Economics |
| JEL: | B3 D6 D9 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:apl:wpaper:19-12&r=all |
| By: | Romain Baeriswyl (Swiss National Bank - Swiss National Bank); Kene My (BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Camille Cornand (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - Université de Lyon - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | Central banks' disclosures, such as forward guidance, have a weaker effect on the economy in reality than in theoretical models. The present paper contributes to understanding how people pay attention and react to various sources of information. In a beauty-contest with information acquisition, we show that strategic complementarities give rise to a double overreaction to public disclosures by increasing agents equilibrium attention, which, in turn, increases the weight assigned to them in equilibrium action. A laboratory experiment provides evidence that the effect of strategic complementarities on the realised attention and the realised action is qualitatively consistent with theoretical predictions, though quantitatively weaker. Both the lack of attention to public disclosures and a limited level of reasoning by economic agents account for the weaker realised reaction. This suggests that it is just as important for a central bank to control reaction to public disclosures by swaying information acquisition by recipients as it is by shaping information disclosures themselves. |
| Keywords: | beauty-contest,information acquisition,overreaction,central bank communication |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02372790&r=all |
| By: | Sheikh Rabiul Islam; William Eberle; Sheikh K. Ghafoor |
| Abstract: | Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of domains such as security, finance, healthcare, medicine, and criminal justice. Explaining the decisions of AI systems in human terms is a key challenge--due to the high complexity of the model, as well as the potential implications on human interests, rights, and lives . While Explainable AI is an emerging field of research, there is no consensus on the definition, quantification, and formalization of explainability. In fact, the quantification of explainability is an open challenge. In our previous work, we incorporated domain knowledge for better explainability, however, we were unable to quantify the extent of explainability. In this work, we (1) briefly analyze the definitions of explainability from the perspective of different disciplines (e.g., psychology, social science), properties of explanation, explanation methods, and human-friendly explanations; and (2) propose and formulate an approach to quantify the extent of explainability. Our experimental result suggests a reasonable and model-agnostic way to quantify explainability |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1911.10104&r=all |
| By: | KAWATA Keisuke; YIN Ting; YOSHIDA Yuichiro |
| Abstract: | The paper estimates the preference for elder policy by using a large scale conjoint survey experiment. While the conjoint survey design allows us to evaluate multiple policy topics, the main interest is mixed elderly care. Methodologically, the paper proposes a parallel design for additional attributes, which allows us to identify the AMCE, conditional on the respondent's policy concern. Our results consistently show positive support for mixed elderly care. |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:19091&r=all |
| By: | Hipp, Lena |
| Abstract: | Although observational studies from many countries have consistently shown that motherhood negatively affects women’s wages, experimental findings on its effect on the likelihood of being hired are less conclusive. Motherhood penalties in hiring have been reported in the US, the prototypical liberal market economy, but not in Sweden, the prototypical social-democratic welfare state. Based on a field experiment in Germany, this study examines the effects of parenthood on hiring processes in the prototypical conservative welfare state. My findings indicate that job recruitment processes indeed penalize women but not men for having children. In addition to providing theoretical explanations for why motherhood penalties in hiring are particularly likely to occur in the German context, this study also highlights several methodological and practical issues that should be considered when conducting correspondence studies to examine labor market discrimination. |
| Date: | 2018–09–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:4a68p&r=all |
| By: | Adrian Bruhin; Kelly Janizzi; Christian Thöni |
| Abstract: | Antisocial punishment in public good games, i.e., punishment of individuals who contributed the same or more than their punisher, varies substantially across cultures. We exploit the data of Herrmann et al. (2008) and estimate a finite mixture model to uncover the heterogeneity behind this variation in a parsimonious way. The finite mixture model reveals that, overall, the population consists of two cleanly segregated punisher types: 35.3% Type AF subjects who engage in antisocial punishment as wellas free rider punishment and 64.7% Type F subjects who engage exclusively in free rider punishment. Moreover, we find that in cultures with high levels of antisocial punishment, Type AF subjects are more frequent. Despite its parsimony, this classification of subjects into types predicts mean earnings per group and enhances our understanding of the large variation in the effectiveness of peer punishment across cultures. |
| Keywords: | Antisocial Punishment, Public Good Games, Finite Mixture Models, Heterogeneity,Cultural Variation |
| JEL: | C92 C72 H41 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lau:crdeep:19.08&r=all |
| By: | Oyinbo, Oyakhilomen; Chamberlin, Jordan; Tahirou, Abdoulaye; Vanlauwe, Bernard; Kamara, Alpha Yaya; Craufurd, Peter; Maertens, Miet |
| Keywords: | Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaae19:295826&r=all |
| By: | Bharathi, Naveen; Malghan, Deepak; Mishra, Sumit; Rahman, Andaleeb |
| Abstract: | We develop a general multi-scale diversity framework to account for spatial segregation of ethnic groups in politically %and administratively nested geographic aggregations. Our framework explains why the celebrated ``diversity-debit hypothesis'' in political economy of public goods is sensitive to spatial unit of analysis, and how not accounting for segregation biases empirical diversity-development models. We test our framework using census data from Indian villages ($n \approx 600,000$) and sub-districts containing these villages ($n \approx 6,000$), for twenty-five different public goods. |
| Date: | 2018–06–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:4fq8z&r=all |
| By: | Antonio F. Galvao; Thomas Parker |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a novel approach to uniform inference for functions that bound the distribution and quantile functions of heterogeneous treatment effects in randomized experiments when only marginal treatment and control distributions are observed and the joint distribution of outcomes is unobserved. These bounds are nonlinear maps of the marginal distribution functions of control and treatment outcomes, and statistical inference methods for nonlinear maps usually rely on smoothness through a type of differentiability. We show that the maps from marginal distributions to bound functions are not differentiable, but uniform test statistics applied to the bound functions - such as Kolmogorov-Smirnov or Cram\'er-von Mises - are directionally differentiable. We establish the consistency and weak convergence of nonparametric plug-in estimates of the test statistics and show how they can be used to conduct inference for bounds uniformly over the distribution of treatment effects. We also establish the directional differentiability of minimax operators applied to general - that is, not only convex-concave - functions, which may be of independent interest. In addition, we develop detailed resampling techniques to conduct practical inference for the bounds or for the true distribution or quantile function of the treatment effect distribution. Finally, we apply our methods to the evaluation of a job training program. |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1911.10215&r=all |
| By: | Guillaume Cheikbossian (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - FRE2010 - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, I study the ability of group members to cooperate against an incumbent in a repeated rent-seeking game and where group members and the incumbent have di¤erent valuations of the prize. I rst consider that group members use Nash Reversion Strategies (NRS) to support cooperative behavior and show that full cooperation within the group is more easily sustained as a Stationary Subgame Perfect (Nash) Equilibrium (SSPE) as either group size, or the heterogeneity in the valuation of the prize, increases. In turn, I show that full cooperation within the challenger group can also be sustained as a Weakly Renegotiation-Proof Equilibrium (WRPE). Yet, an increase in group size makes it more di¢ cult to sustain within-group cooperation but an increase in the relative valuation of the prize by group members still facilitates group cooperation. |
| Keywords: | Renegotiation,Collective Action,Group Cooperation,Repeated Game,Trigger Strategies |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpceem:hal-02378829&r=all |