Papers - All

Christopher Mann

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 5

The survey methodology literature has debated whether advance letters to potential survey respondents will reduce nonresponse bias and thereby improve the accuracy of preelection forecasts. This research note analyzes the results of experiments conducted in Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania in which advance letters were sent to a random sample of potential survey respondents to 2002 preelection surveys. We find a significant increase in the overall response rate, although notably less than in past studies. However, the advance letters did not improve the representativeness of survey respondents or the accuracy of the election forecasts.

Gerald Pruckner, Rupert Sausgruber

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 48

A publisher uses an honor-system for selling a newspaper in the street. The customers make payments into a cash-box, but can also just take the paper without paying. Payments are not monitored and highly anonymous; hence customers exhibit trustworthiness if they pay for the paper. We run a natural field experiment to identify motives behind payments. The experiment reveals that trustworthiness is based on a social rather than a legal norm. Additional survey questions serve to identify individual-specific components of trustworthiness. We find effects of gender, age, family status, church attendance, measures of reciprocity, social connectedness, and social risk.

Rachel Croson, Americus Reed, Jen Shang

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Information is presented about a presentation at the Advances in Consumer Research North American Conference on social information and marketing environments in donation behavior. Topics in the presentation include activated identities in decision-making, contextual cues in donation behavior, and gender identity in informers and targets of social information. Field experiments on radio pledges are also described.

Maria De Paola, Francesca Gioia, Vincenzo Scoppa

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 10

We analyze how overconfidence is affected by superstitious beliefs and emotions induced by positive and negative stimuli in a field experiment involving about 700 Italian students who were randomly assigned to numbered seats in their written examination sessions. According to widespread superstitions, some numbers are considered lucky, while others are considered unlucky. At the end of the examination, we asked students the grade they expected to get. We find that students tend to be systematically overconfident and that their overconfidence is positively affected by being assigned to a lucky number. Interestingly, males and females react differently: on the one hand, females tend to expect lower grades when assigned to unlucky numbers, while they are not affected by being assigned to lucky numbers. On the other hand, males are not affected by being assigned to unlucky numbers but expect higher grades when assigned to lucky numbers.

Juan-Camilo Cardenas, Jeff P Carpenter

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 13

No abstract available

Hisaki Kono

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 12

Microfinance institutions employ various kinds of incentive schemes but estimating the effect of each scheme is not easy due to endogeneity bias. We conducted field experiments in Vietnam to capture the role of joint liability, monitoring, cross-reporting, social sanctions, communication and group formation in borrowers' repayment behavior. We find that joint liability contracts cause serious free-riding problems, inducing strategic default and lowering repayment rates. When group members observe each others' investment returns, participants are more likely to choose strategic default. Even after introducing a cross-reporting system and/or penalties among borrowers, the default rates and the ratios of participants who chose strategic default under joint liability are still higher than those under individual lending. We also find that joint liability lending often failed to induce mutual insurance among borrowers. Those who had been helped or who had repaid a little in the previous round were more likely to default strategically and repay a little again in the current round and those who paid large amounts were always the same individuals.

Peter Bohm

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 13

No abstract available

Juan-Camilo Cardenas

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 54

This paper discusses why running experiments in the field, outside of the university lab, can help us enrich the analysis we do of experimental data. One of the main arguments of the paper is that people participating in experiments, including students, do not come naked to the lab. They bring a great deal of rules of thumb, heuristics, values, prejudices, expectations and knowledge about the others participating, and about similar games, and use such information to make their decisions. The paper offers a short mention of relevant field experiments, and a more detailed look at field experiments conducted by the author, including a data set of CPR experiments run in 10 villages, between 2000 and 2002, with more than 1300 villagers in about 220 sessions, and replications with about 250 university students in more than 40 sessions. It offers then main lessons from bringing the lab to the field. Also there is a discussion of additional information gathered through different field instruments as well as community workshops with the participants to discuss the experimental data, the external validity of the experiments and their results, through parallels with their daily life. One of the lessons is that the greater variance in certain demographics about the experimental subjects might help explain variations in lab behavior that cannot be fully explained by the experimental institutions we study. Also, certain significant differences in behavior between villagers and students will be discussed.

Mary Kay Gugerty, Michael Kremer

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 7

Many argue that organizations of the disadvantaged create positive externalities, and in particular strengthen the position of these groups in society. A natural inference is that these organizations should be subsidized. We argue that the benefits of expanding the operations of these groups must be set against the potential costs of weakening the role of the disadvantaged in these organizations. A prospective, randomized evaluation of a development program targeted at strengthening rural women's groups in western Kenya suggests that the program did not improve group strength or functioning as measured by participation rates, assistance to members, and assistance to other community projects. The funding did, however, change the very characteristics of the groups that made them attractive to funders in the first place. Younger, more educated women and women employed in the formal sector joined the groups, and men and better-educated and wealthier women moved into key leadership positions.

Joshua D Angrist, Victor Lavy

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 40

In Israel, as in many other countries, a high school matriculation certificate is required by universities and some jobs. In spite of the certificate's value, Israeli society is marked by vast differences in matriculation rates by region and socioeconomic status. We attempted to increase the likelihood of matriculation among low-achieving students by offering substantial cash incentives in two demonstration programs. As a theoretical matter, cash incentives may be helpful if low-achieving students reduce investment in schooling because of high discount rates, part-time work, or face peer pressure not to study. A small pilot program selected individual students within schools for treatment, with treatment status determined by previous test scores and a partially randomized cutoff for low socioeconomic status. In a larger follow-up program, entire schools were randomly selected for treatment and the program operated with the cooperation of principals and teachers. The results suggest the Achievement Awards program that randomized treatment at the school level raised matriculation rates, while the student-based program did not.

Nava Ashaf, Xavier Gine, Dean S Karlan

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 41

This paper evaluates a program in Kenya that encourages the production of export oriented crops by providing smallholder farmers with credit linked to agricultural extension and marketing services. We use an experimental design in which farmer selfhelp groups are randomly assigned to either a control group, a group receiving all DrumNet services, or a group receiving all services except credit. Among the services offered by DrumNet, credit is the most important. Since the production of export crops requires a significant investment in capital and inputs, without credit farmers are less likely to plant the mentioned crops. Overall, the results show that DrumNet is an effective model for encouraging the production of export oriented crops.

Christopher Mann

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 7

Survey researchers have long been concerned with the question of whether participation in preelection surveys increases voter turnout. This article presents findings from three large-scale field experiments conducted during the 2002 general election in Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania. Unlike early studies, which found that participation in preelection surveys increased voter turnout, this study finds no significant effect. The author argues that the rigorous experimental methodology and large sample size in these three experiments should allay concern that survey participation affects turnout.

Dean S Karlan

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 28

Questions remain as to whether results from experimental economics are generalizable to real decisions in nonlaboratory settings. Furthermore, questions persist about whether social capital helps mitigate information asymmetries in credit markets. I examine whether behavior in two laboratory games, Trust and a Public Goods, predicts loan repayments to a Peruvian group-lending microfinance program. Since this program relies on social capital to enforce repayment, this tests the external validity of the games. Individuals identified as "trustworthy" by the Trust Game are indeed less likely to default on their loans. No similar support is found for the game's identification of "trusting" individuals.

Frode Alfnes, Maren E Bachke, Mette Wik

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 27

Most charity organizations depend on contributions from the general public, but little research is conducted on donor preferences. Do donors have geographical, recipient, or thematic preferences? We designed a conjoint analysis experiment in which people rated development aid projects by donating money in dictator games. We find that our sample show strong age, gender, regional, and thematic preferences. Furthermore, we find significant differences between segments. The differences in donations are consistent with differences in donors' attitudes toward development aid and their beliefs about differences in poverty and vulnerability of the recipients. The method here used for development projects can easily be adapted to elicit preferences for other kinds of projects that rely on gifts from private donors.

Abigail Barr, Truman G Packard

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 9

Exploiting new data from a survey and behavioral experiment conducted in Peru we analyze individuals' preferences for securing income in old age. We identify a group that is unrationed by the mandate to save in Peru's pension system, and draw insights from their affiliation and contribution behavior. Among the unrationed, those who are more tolerant of risk, have more children, and have a greater share of housing in their accumulated assets are less likely to affiliate and/or contribute to the formal pensions system. Further, the less risk tolerant choose private individual retirement accounts over a publicly administered pension system.

Jonathan E Alevy, Oscar Cristi, Oscar Melo

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 12

Field experiments were conducted with farmers in the Limari Valley of Chile to test extant theory on right-to-choose auctions. Water volumes that differed by reservoir source and time of availability were offered for sale by the research team. The auctions were supplemented by protocols to elicit risk and time preferences of bidders. We find that the right-to-choose auctions raise significantly more revenue than the benchmark sequential auction. Risk attitudes explain a substantial amount of the difference in bidding between auction institutions, consonant with received theory. The auction bidding revealed distinct preferences for water types, which has implications for market re-design.

Werner Guth, Carsten Schmidt, Matthias Sutter

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 17

5,132 readers of the German weekly, Die Zeit, participated in a three-person bargaining experiment. In our data analysis we focus on (1) the influence of age, gender, profession and medium chosen for participation and (2) the external validity of student behaviour (inside and outside the lab). We find that older participants and women care more about equal distributions and that Internet users are more self-regarding than those using mail or fax. Decisions made by students in the lab are rather similar to those made by participants in the newspaper experiment, indicating a high degree of external validity of student data.

Christina M Fong

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 4

This paper reports a surprising finding from an experiment on giving to welfare recipients. The experiment tests how offers of money in n-donor dictator games are affected by 1) donors' humanitarian and egalitarian values and 2) direct information about the recipients' work-preferences. People who are self-reported humanitarians and egalitarians have giving that is highly elastic with respect to the apparent worthiness of the recipient. Among high scoring humanitarian-egalitarians, the median offer to a recipient who appeared industrious was $5.00, while the median offer to a recipient who appeared lazy was only $1.00. Among low scoring humanitarian-egalitarians, the median offer was $1.00 in both conditions. I refer to this combination of altruism and equity/reciprocity as empathic responsiveness. This finding can be rationalized by a model of inequity aversion.

Glenn W Harrison, John A List, Charles Towe

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 29

Does individual behavior in a laboratory setting provide a reliable indicator of behavior in a naturally occurring setting? We consider this general methodological question in the context of eliciting risk attitudes. The controls that are typically employed in laboratory settings, such as the use of abstract lotteries, could lead subjects to employ behavioral rules that differ from the ones they employ in the field. Because it is field behavior that we are interested in understanding, those controls might be a confound in themselves if they result in differences in behavior. We find that the use of artificial monetary prizes provides a reliable measure of risk attitudes when the natural counterpart outcome has minimal uncertainty, but that it can provide an unreliable measure when the natural counterpart outcome has background risk. Behavior tended to be moderately risk averse when artificial monetary prizes were used or when there was minimal uncertainty in the natural nonmonetary outcome, but subjects drawn from the same population were much more risk averse when their attitudes were elicited using the natural nonmonetary outcome that had some background risk. These results are consistent with conventional expected utility theory for the effects of background risk on attitudes to risk.

Alessandra Cassar, Lucas Crowley, Bruce Wydick

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 13

An important question to microfinance is the relevance of existing social capital in target communities to the performance of group lending. This research presents evidence from field experiments in South Africa and Armenia, in which subjects participate in trust games and a microfinance game. We present moderately strong evidence that personal trust between group members and peer homogeneity are more important to group loan repayment than general societal trust or mere acquaintanceship between members. We also find some evidence of reciprocity in groups: those who have been helped by other members are more likely to contribute themselves.