Papers - All

Alan S Gerber, Anton Orlich, Jennifer K Smith

Cited by*: 9 Downloads*: 8

Psychological research has found that being asked to predict one's future actions can bring about subsequent behavior consistent with the prediction but different from what would have occurred had no prediction been made. In a 1987 study, Greenwald, Carnot, Beach, and Young induced an increase in voting behavior by means of such a "self-prophecy" effect: Undergraduates who were asked to predict whether they would vote in an upcoming election were substantially more likely to go to the polls than those who had not been asked for a prediction. This paper reports on a replication of the Greenwald study conducted among a larger group of respondents more representative of the American electorate. No evidence was found that self-prophecy effects increase voter turnout.

William Masters, Diakalia Sanogo

Cited by*: 9 Downloads*: 9

In low-income countries, malnutrition is often most sever among infants of six to twenty-four months. They need higher-density foods than the family diet, but density is a credence attribute. We hypothesize that the premium now paid for heavily advertised brands reflects demand for quality assurance, which could be provided at lower cost to competing firms through third-party certification. We use a new market experiment to find that mothers' average willingness-to-pay for certification is about $1.75/kg, for four times its cost, so that total economic-surplus gains from introducing certification to Mali would be on the order of $1 million annually.

Marianne Bertrand, Simeon Djankov, Rema Hanna, Sendhil Mullainathan

Cited by*: 9 Downloads*: 14

We follow 822 applicants through the process of obtaining a driver's license in New Delhi, India. To understand how the bureaucracy responds to individual and social needs, participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: bonus, lesson, and comparison groups. Participants in the bonus group were offered a financial reward if they could obtain their license fast; participants in the lesson group were offered free driving lessons. To gauge driving skills, we performed a surprise driving test after participants had obtained their licenses. Several interesting facts regarding corruption emerge. First, the bureaucracy responds to individual needs. Those who want their license faster (e.g. the bonus group), get it 40% faster and at a 20% higher rate. Second, the bureaucracy is insensitive to social needs. The bonus group does not learn to drive safely in order to obtain their license: in fact, 69% of them were rated as "failures" on the independent driving test. Those in the lesson group, despite superior driving skills, are only slightly more likely to obtain a license than the comparison group and far less likely (by 29 percentage points) than the bonus group. Detailed surveys allow us to document the mechanisms of corruption. We find that bureaucrats arbitrarily fail drivers at a high rate during the driving exam, irrespective of their ability to drive. To overcome this, individuals pay informal "agents" to bribe the bureaucrat and avoid taking the exam altogether. An audit study of agents further highlights the insensitivity of agents' pricing to driving skills. Together, these results suggest that bureaucrats raise red tape to extract bribes and that this corruption undermines the very purpose of regulation.

Erwin Bulte, Andreas Kontoleon, John A List, Ty Turley, Maarten Voors

Cited by*: 9 Downloads*: 46

We implement a public goods game and a social intervention modeled after a public goods game in rural Sierra Leone near the Gola Forest Reserve. We also collect demographic, economic and forest conservation data on households in the area. We use this data to assess the mapping of social preferences from the artefactual field experiment (AFE) into real world behavior. We find evidence of heterogeneity in shifting factors between the AFE, the field experiment, and conservation outcomes. We also find evidence that social controls like war violence and witchcraft may explain some of this correlation.

John A List, Jason F Shogren

Cited by*: 9 Downloads*: 8

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Alexandre Mas, Amanda Pallais

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 3

We use a field experiment to study how workers value alternative work arrangements. During the application process to staff a national call center we randomly offered applicants choices between traditional M-F 9am - 5pm office positions and alternatives. These alternatives include flexible scheduling, working from home, and positions that give the employer discretion over scheduling. We randomlyvaried the wage difference between the traditional option and the alternative, allowing us to estimate the entire distribution of willingness to pay (WTP) for these alternatives. We validate our results using a nationally-representative survey. The great majority of workers are not willing to pay for flexible scheduling relative to a traditional schedule: either the ability to choose the days and times of work or the number of hours they work. However, the average worker is willing to give up 20% of wages to avoid a schedule set by an employer on a week's notice. This largely represents workers' aversion to evening and weekend work, not scheduling unpredictability. Traditional M-F 9am - 5pm schedules are preferred by most jobseekers. Despite the fact that the average worker isn't willing to pay for scheduling flexibility, a tail of workers with high WTP allows for sizable compensating differentials. Of the workerfriendly options we test, workers are willing to pay the most (8% of wages) for the option of working from home. Women, particularly those with young children, have higher WTP for work from home and to avoid employer scheduling discretion. They are slightly more likely to be in jobs with these amenities, but the differences are not large enough to explain any wage gaps.

Paul Glewwe, Michael Kremer, Sylvie Moulin

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 51

Although there is intense debate about the effect of increased expenditure on education in developed countries, there is widespread consensus that provision of textbooks can substantially increase test scores in developing countries. This paper evaluates a program through which a Dutch non-profit organization provided textbooks to 25 rural Kenyan primary schools that were chosen randomly from a group of 100 candidate schools. After one school year, average test scores did not differ substantially between program and comparison schools. However, for those students in the top quintile of the distribution of initial academic achievement, the program raised test scores by at least 0.2 standard deviations.

Greer K Gosnell, John A List, Robert D Metcalfe

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 42

Understanding motivations in the workplace remains of utmost import as economies around the world rely on increases in labor productivity to foster sustainable economic growth. This study makes use of a unique opportunity to "look under the hood" of an organization that critically relies on worker effort and performance. By partnering with Virgin Atlantic Airways on a field experiment that includes over 40,000 unique flights covering an eight-month period, we explore how information and incentives affect captains' performance. Making use of more than 110,000 captain-level observations, we find that our set of treatments-which include performance information, personal targets, and prosocial incentives-induces captains to improve efficiency in all three key flight areas: pre-flight, in-flight, and post-flight. We estimate that our treatments saved between 266,000-704,000 kg of fuel for the airline over the eight-month experimental period. These savings led to between 838,000-2.22 million kg of CO2 abated at a marginal abatement cost of negative $250 per ton of CO2 (i.e. a $250 savings per ton abated) over the eight-month experimental period. Methodologically, our approach highlights the potential usefulness of moving beyond an experimental design that focuses on short-run substitution effects, and it also suggests a new way to combat firm-level externalities: target workers rather than the firm as a whole.

Armin Falk

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 17

This study reports data from a field experiment that was conducted to investigate the relevance of gift-exchange for charitable giving. Roughly 10,000 solicitation letters were sent to potential donors in the experiment. One third of the letters contained no gift, one third contained a small gift and one third contained a large gift. Whether a potential donor received a letter with or without a gift was randomly determined. We observe strong and systematic effects from including gifts. Compared to the no gift condition, the relative frequency of donations increased by 17 percent if a small gift was included and by 75 percent for a large gift. Consequently, including gifts was highly profitable for the charitable organization. The contribution of this paper is twofold: first, it shows that gift-exchange is important for charitable giving, in addition to the warm-glow motive. Second, the paper confirms the economic relevance of reciprocity by using field data. This extends the current body of research on reciprocity, which is almost exclusively confined to laboratory studies.

John A List, Michael Margolis, Jason F Shogren

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 6

Evidence suggests the calibration of hypothetical and actual behavior is good-specific. We examine whether clustering commodities into mutual categories can reduce the burden. While we reject a common calibration across sets of commodities, a sport-specific calibration function cannot be rejected.

Paul Dolan, Robert D Metcalfe

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 6

There is increasing research on the exogenous impact of descriptive social norms on economic behavior. The research to date has a number of limitations: 1) it has not de-coupled the impact of the norm and the knowledge required to understand how to change behavior based upon it; 2) it has exclusively used offline but not online (i.e. emails) methods; and 3) it has not understood the impact of financial incentives in conjunction with norms. We address these three limitations using two natural field experiments. We find, firstly, that norms change energy behavior over a 15 month treatment period irrespective of whether information is provided or not. We find that social norms reduce consumption by around 6% (0.2 standard deviations). Norms have has their largest impact on the day that information on the social norm is received, and then decreases over time. Secondly, we do not find that social norms work online (even with experienced consumers who are used to online billing) - social norms de- livered online may have very little beneficial effects on reducing energy use. Thirdly, we find that large financial rewards work very well online in reducing consumption, with a 0.35 change in energy consumption over a four month period. Perhaps most interestingly, we find that the large effect of financial incentives is completely removed when information on social norms is added online.

Uri Gneezy, Moshe Hoffman, John A List

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 22

Women remain significantly underrepresented in the science, engineering, and technology workforce. Some have argued that spatial ability differences, which represent the most persistent gender differences in the cognitive literature, are partly responsible for this gap. The underlying forces at work shaping the observed spatial ability differences revolve naturally around the relative roles of nature and nurture. Although these forces remain among the most hotly debated in all of the sciences, the evidence for nurture is tenuous, because it is difficult to compare gender differences among biologically similar groups with distinct nurture. In this study, we use a large-scale incentivized experiment with nearly 1,300 participants to show that the gender gap in spatial abilities, measured by time to solve a puzzle, disappears when we move from a patrilineal society to an adjoining matrilineal society. We also show that about one-third of the effect can be explained by differences in education. Given that none of our participants have experience with puzzle solving and that villagers from both societies have the same means of subsistence and shared genetic background, we argue that these results show the role of nurture in the gender gap in cognitive abilities.

Per Fredriksson , John A List, Daniel L Millimet

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 1

Empirical evidence suggesting that a considerable amount of horizontal strategic interaction exists amongst governments is important in light of recent devolutionary trends of many important public programs. The empirical approach in these studies typically relies on estimating reaction functions in a uni-dimensional policy framework, where a nonzero slope estimate is interpreted as evidence in support of strategic interactions. While this framework is a useful representation within certain contexts, it is potentially too restrictive; for example, in models of resource competition, localities may use multiple instruments in their recruiting pursuits, leading to potential strategic interactions across policy instruments. In this study, we first develop a simple theoretic construct that includes resource competition in a world of three-dimensional policy choice. The model suggests that while a zero-sloped reaction function may exist for any particular policy, this does not necessarily imply the absence of strategic interactions. We examine the implications of the model empirically using US state-level panel data over the period 1977-1994. The results suggest that important cross-policy strategic interactions exist, lending support in favor of the multi-dimensional framework, and indicate that uni-dimensional frameworks may present lower bound estimates of the degree of strategic interaction.

John A List, Michael K Price

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 7

One fact that has emerged in modern societies is that people help others. Whether it is donating a few dollars to help feed the poor or volunteering time to help rebuild someone's life after a natural disaster, people around the globe commonly lend a hand. This study provides an overview of that support, summarizing gifts of both time and money around the globe. We also highlight research that indicates useful ways in which we can enhance the charitable pie. Our discussion revolves around both individual giving and corporate philanthropy, but we focus on empirical insights from recent charitable fundraising field experiments in the Western World. We present information that is useful for policymakers, fundraising practitioners, and academicians.

Steven D Levitt, John A List, Sally Sadoff

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 46

We test the effect of performance-based incentives on educational achievement in a low-performing school district using a randomized field experiment. High school freshmen were provided monthly financial incentives for meeting an achievement standard based on multiple measures of performance including attendance, behavior, grades and standardized test scores. Within the design, we compare the effectiveness of varying the recipient of the reward (students or parents) and the incentive structure (fixed rate or lottery). While the overall effects of the incentives are modest, the program has a large and significant impact among students on the threshold of meeting the achievement standard. These students continue to outperform their control group peers a year after the financial incentives end. However, the program effects fade in longer term follow up, highlighting the importance of longer term tracking of incentive programs.

John A List, Daniel Rondeau

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 7

Evidence suggests that contributions to capital campaigns increase with the value of leadership gifts. We examine the response of subjects to the announcement of leadership gifts and its implied change in the campaign's target. The two effects are partitioned.

John A List, Warren McHone , Daniel L Millimet

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 4

The Clean Air Act and its subsequent amendments have been lauded as the primary stimulant to the impressive improvement in local air quality in the US since 1970. A key component of these regulations is the New Source Review (NSR) requirement, which includes the contentious stipulation that when an existing plant seeks to modify its operations, the entire plant must comply with current standards for new sources. This requirement was included to improve air quality in dirty areas, and prevent a deterioration of air quality in clean areas. Yet, whether NSR provides the proper plant-level incentives is unclear: there are strong disincentives to undertake major plant modifications to avoid NSR. In our examination of more than 2500 and 2200 plant-level modification decisions and closures, respectively, we find empirical evidence suggesting that NSR retards modification rates, while doing little to hasten the closure of existing dirty plants.

John A List, Warren McHone

Cited by*: 7 Downloads*: 2

This paper uses state-level pollution data from 1986-1997 to construct two indices that rank U.S. states according to environmental outputs. A major finding is that marginal performers in other indices, such as Wyoming, garner top spots in these ranking systems. The paper also presents findings from fixed and random effects models of panel data that imply state income levels are positively associated with environmental outputs after a threshold level of income is obtained.

Richard Hofler, John A List

Cited by*: 7 Downloads*: 5

The lack of robust evidence showing that hypothetical behavior directly maps into real actions remains a major concern for proponents of stated preference nonmarket valuation techniques. This article explores a new statistical approach to link actual and hypothetical statements. Using willingness-topay field data on individual bids from sealed-bid auctions for a $350 baseball card, our results are quite promising. Estimating a stochastic frontier regression model that makes use of data that any contingent valuation survey would obtain, we derive a bid function that is not statistically different from the bid function obtained from subjects in an actual auction. If other data can be calibrated similarly, this method holds significant promise since an appropriate calibration scheme, ex ante or ex post, can be invaluable to the policy maker that desires more accurate estimates of use and nonuse values for nonmarket goods and services.

Vegard Iversen, Cecile Jackson, Bereket Kebede, Alistair Munro, Arjan Verschoor

Cited by*: 7 Downloads*: 23

We test core theories of the household using variants of a public good game and experimental data from 240 couples in rural Uganda. Spouses do not maximise surplus from cooperation and realise a greater surplus when women are in charge. This violates assumptions of unitary and cooperative models. When women control the common account, they receive less than when men control it; this contradicts standard bargaining models. Women contribute less than men and are rewarded more generously by men than vice versa. This casts doubt on postulates in Sen (1990). While the absence of altruism is rejected, we find evidence for opportunism. The results are put in a socioeconomic context using quantitative and qualitative survey data. Assortative matching and correlates of bargaining power influence behaviour within the experiments. Our findings suggest that a one-size fits all?? model of the household is unlikely to be satisfactory.