Papers - All

Nick Drydakis

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This research examines the possible discrimination faced by gay men compared to heterosexuals when applying for jobs in the Greek private sector. This issue was addressed through the observation of employer hiring decisions. Mailing pairs of curriculum vitae, distinguished only by the sexual orientation of the applicants, led to the observation that gay men faced a significantly lower chance of receiving an invitation for an interview. However, in cases where employers called applicants back, the wages offered did not differ significantly between gay and heterosexual applicants. Nevertheless, there is substantial evidence to suggest that discrimination based on sexual orientation does exist in the Greek labour market, and at alarmingly high levels.

Omar Al-Ubaydli, Steffen Andersen, Uri Gneezy, John A List

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Constructing compensation schemes for effort in multi-dimensional tasks is complex, particularly when some dimensions are not easily observable. When incentive schemes contractually reward workers for easily observed measures, such as quantity produced, the standard model predicts that unrewarded dimensions, such as quality, will be neglected. Yet, there remains mixed empirical evidence in favor of this standard principal-agent model prediction. This paper reconciles the literature by using both theory and empirical evidence. The theory outlines conditions under which principals can use a piece rate scheme to induce higher quantity and quality levels than analogous fixed wage schemes. Making use of a series of complementary laboratory and field experiments we show that this effect occurs because the agent is uncertain about the principal's monitoring ability and the principal's choice of a piece rate signals to the agent that she is efficient at monitoring.

Daniel Houser, John A List, Anya Samek

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Young children have long been known to act selfishly and gradually appear to become more generous across middle childhood. While this apparent change has been well documented, the underlying mechanisms supporting this remain unclear. The current study examined the role of early theory of mind and executive functioning in facilitating sharing in a large sample (N = 98) of preschoolers. Results reveal a curious relation between early false-belief understanding and sharing behavior. Contrary to many commonsense notions and predominant theories, competence in this ability is actually related to less sharing. Thus, the relation between developing theory of mind and sharing may not be as straightforward as it seems in preschool age children. It is precisely the children who can engage in theory of mind that decide to share less with others.

Shakun Mago, Anya Samek, Roman Sheremeta

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We experimentally investigate the effect of social identification and information feedback on individual behavior in contests. In all treatments we find significant over-expenditure of effort relative to the standard theoretical predictions. Identifying subjects through photo display decreases wasteful effort. Providing information feedback about others' effort does not affect the aggregate effort, but it decreases the heterogeneity of effort and significantly affects the dynamics of individual behavior. A behavioral model which incorporates a non-monetary utility of winning and relative payoff maximization explains significant over-expenditure of effort. It also suggests that decrease in 'social distance' between group members through social identification promotes pro-social behavior and decreases over-expenditure of effort, while improved information feedback decreases the heterogeneity of effort.

Inkyoung Hur, Sung-Hee Kim, Anya Samek, Ji Soo Yi

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We investigate the effect of different interactive technologies on the decision-making process in an information search laboratory experiment. In our experiment, the participant makes a selection from a list of differently-valued objects with multiple attributes. We compare presenting information in static form to two methods of interactive presentation. In the first, the participant can manually sort objects by attribute, a capability similar to that found in spreadsheet software. In the second, we present an interactive visual tool that (1) automatically sorts all objects by attribute and (2) uses visual cues for comparisons. Manual sorting capability does not cause an improvement in decisions in this context. On the other hand, the visual tool increases the value of the objects selected by the participant and decreases time spent deliberating. We also find that our interactive presentations affect the decision-making process of participants by changing the number of intermediate options considered. Our results highlight the importance of investigating the effect of technology on information search, and suggest that appropriate interactive visual displays may improve search in practice.

John A List

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No abstract available

Lester Lusher

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Procrastination, an issue linked to poor performance and decreased well-being, is a pervasive problem in education. This paper examines the role of commitment and motivation by evaluating a program called CollegeBetter.com which acts as a commitment device and monetary incentive to help college students battle problems of present bias. The zero-sum mechanism is based off a parimutuel betting market, where students join a pool by placing a monetary wager on themselves to achieve the pool's "commitment challenge." Students who successfully commit to the challenge 1) recover their wagers and 2) split losing wagers proportionally. Through a series of lab and field experiments, I find that students interested in the mechanism were low-achieving, overconfident, self-identified procrastinators, while traditional measures of time-preferences were weak predictors of selection. Across all pools, students randomly selected to participate were more likely to achieve the commitment challenge than students who applied for a spot but were randomly excluded. Consistent with loss aversion, having the student risk their own money is a principal contributor to the effectiveness of the mechanism.

John A List, Anya Samek

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An active area of research within economics concerns the underpinnings of why people give to charitable causes. This study takes a new approach to this question by exploring motivations for giving among children aged 3-5. Using data gathered from 122 children, our artefactual field experiment naturally permits us to disentangle pure altruism and warm glow motivators for giving. We find evidence for the existence of pure altruism but not warm glow. Our results suggest pure altruism is a fundamental component of our preferences, and highlight that warm glow preferences found amongst adults likely develop over time. One speculative hypothesis is that warm glow preferences are learned through socialization.

Gerhard Klimeck, Anya Samek

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We conducted an experiment with 30,000 users of a virtual nanotechnology facility, nanoHUB.org. We investigate the effect of virtual points and message framing on user participation in a survey. In one treatment, users receive points for completing the survey. In another treatment, users are exposed to a visual observation cue. We vary the social message, either emphasizing the private benefit to the user or the social benefit to the community of participation. Participation rates are increased through virtual points and for users receiving the private benefit messaging. The observation cue doesn't have an effect.

Jared Rubin, Anya Samek, Roman Sheremeta

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Firms face an optimization problem that requires a maximal quantity output given a quality constraint. How firms should incentivize quantity and quality to meet these dual goals remains an open question. We provide a theoretical model and conduct an experiment in which participants are paid for both quantity and quality of a real effort task. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, higher quality incentives encourage participants to shift their attention from quantity to quality and to decrease the error rate at the expense of lowering quantity of output. This quantity-quality trade-off is significantly impacted by the participant's ability and level of loss aversion.

Anya Samek, Roman Sheremeta

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Recognizing donors by revealing their identities is important for increasing charitable giving. We conducted a field experiment to examine how different recognition methods impact giving, and found that all forms of recognition that we examined had a positive impact on increasing donations, whereby recognizing only highest donors (positive recognition) and recognizing only lowest donors (negative recognition) had the most pronounced effect. We argue that selective recognition (both positive and negative) creates tournament-like incentives. Recognizing the highest donors activates the desire to seek a positive prize of prestige, thus increasing the proportion of donors who contribute large amounts. Recognizing the lowest donors activates the desire to avoid a negative prize of shame, thus decreasing the proportion of donors who do not contribute or contribute very little. Therefore, selective recognition is an effective tool that can be used in the field by charities to increase donations.

Avner Ben-Ner, John A List, Louis Putterman, Anya Samek

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An active area of research within the social sciences concerns the underlying motivation for sharing scarce resources and engaging in other pro-social actions. We develop a theoretical framework that sheds light on the developmental origins of social preferences by providing mechanisms through which parents transmit preferences for generosity to their children. Then, we conduct a field experiment with nearly 150 3-5 year old children and their parents, measuring (1) whether child and parent generosity is correlated, (2) whether children are influenced by their parents when making sharing decisions and (3) whether parents model generosity to children. We observe no correlation of independently measured parent and child sharing decisions at this young age. Yet, we find that apart from those choosing an equal allocation of resources between themselves and another child, children adjust their behaviors to narrow the gap with their parent's or other adult's choice. We find that fathers, and parents of initially generous children, increase their sharing when informed that their child will be shown their choice.

Julian Conrads, Tommaso Reggiani, Rainer M Rilke

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Ambiguity about the chances of winning represents a key aspect in lotteries. By means of a controlled field experiment, we exogenously vary the degree of ambiguity about the winning chances of lotteries organized to incentivize the contribution for a public good. In one treatment, people have been simply informed about the maximum number of potential participants (i.e. the number of lottery tickets released). In a second treatment, this information has been omitted as in all traditional lotteries. Our general finding shows that simply reducing the degree of ambiguity of the lottery leads to a sizable and significant increase (67%) in the participation rate. This result is robust to alternative prize configurations.

Ronald G Cummings, Paul J Ferraro

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Economists have paid increasing attention to the role of cultural diversity in explaining the variability of economic outcomes across societies. We develop an experimental framework that complements existing research in this area. We implement the framework with two cultures that coexist in an industrialized society: the Hispanic and Navajo cultures in the southwestern United States. We vary the ethnic mix of our experimental sessions in order to infer the effect of intercultural interactions on economic behavior and outcomes. We control for demographic differences in our subject pools and elicit beliefs directly in order to differentiate between statistical discrimination and preference-based discrimination. We present clear evidence that Hispanic and Navajo subjects behave differently and that their behavior is affected by the ethnic composition of the experimental session. Our experimental framework has the potential to shed much needed light on economic behavior and outcomes in societies of mixed ethnicity, race and religion.

Juan-Camilo Cardenas, John K Stranlund, Cleve E Willis

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No abstract available

Amanda Chuan, Anya Samek

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We conducted a field experiment with a charitable group to investigate whether giving the donor an option to write a personal message to the recipient influences giving behavior. Over 1,500 households were approached in a door-to-door campaign and randomized to either a control or a treatment in which donors could include a card for the recipient. We predict that treatment should increase contributions through making the gift more meaningful, but may also decrease contribution rate by increasing the social or other cost of donating. We find evidence in favor of the cost effect, and no evidence of increased giving.

Anya Samek

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 54

The gender difference in competitiveness has been cited as an important factor driving the gender gap in labor market outcomes. Using a natural field experiment with 35,000 university students, I explore the impact of compensation scheme on willingness to apply for a job. I find that competitive compensation schemes disproportionately deter women from applying, which cannot be explained by differences in risk preferences alone. I also vary whether the job is introduced as helping a non-profit, which increases application rates, suggesting a role for social preferences in application decisions. Finally, I observe a correlation between competitiveness preferences and career choice.

Pieter A Gautier, Bas van der Klaauw

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We use data from a promotion campaign of NH-Hoteles to study self-selection of participants in a gift-exchange experiment. The promotion campaign allowed guests to pay any non negative amount of money for a stay in one of 36 hotels in Belgium and the Netherlands. The data allow us to distinguish between `regular guests', who booked prior to the announcement of the promotion campaign and guests who booked after the campaign was announced. During the promotion campaign we varied the posted price of a room that was communicated to the guests. Only the regular guests respond to the exogenous variation in the posted price and they pay substantially more on average. This different behavior cannot be explained by differences in satisfaction or observed compositional differences between both groups. We argue that the promotion campaign mainly attracted individuals who find it relatively unimportant to be viewed of as prosocial.

John A List, Anya Samek, Terri Zhu

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We use a field experiment to investigate the effect of incentives on food purchase decisions at a grocery store. We recruit over 200 participants and track their purchases for a period of 6 months, permitting us a glimpse of more than 3,500 individual shopping trips. We randomize participants to one of several treatments, in which we incentivize fresh fruit and vegetable purchases, provide tips for fruit and vegetable preparation, or both. We report several key insights. First, our informational content treatment has little effect. Second, we find an important price effect: modest pecuniary incentives more than double the proportion of dollars spent on produce in the grocery store. Third, we find an interesting pattern of consumption after the experiment ends: even when incentives are removed, the treatment group has higher fruit and vegetable purchases compared to the control group. These long-term results are in stark contrast to either a standard price model or a behavioral model of 'crowd out.' Rather, our results are consonant with a habit formation model. This opens up the distinct possibility that short term incentives can be used as a key instrument to combat obesity.

Sujoy Chakravarty, Carine Sebi, E Somanathan, Emmanuel Theophilus

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The public goods problem (Hardin, 1968) either viewed as a problem of extraction or that of contribution has had a long history in the Social Sciences.Our experimental design uses a standard Voluntary Contributions Mechanism (VCM) game with a moderately large group of ten and face-to-face communication. The subjects, who are villagers in the Gori-Ganga Basin of the Central Himalayas, are not re-matched every period.Our results are somewhat different from laboratory experiments using a similar design such as Isaac and Walker (1988a, 1988b). A noteworthy general observation is that even with a relatively low Marginal Per Capita Return (MPCR = 0.2) and a large group we find a steady contribution rate around 55 percent, which diminishes slightly at the end of the session to around 45 percent. We also delve into the demographic characteristics of our subject pool and find that individual contribution to the common pool is determined by gender, age, caste, literacy and history of cooperation in the experiment. However, face-to-face communication is not seen to increase average individual contribution to the common pool.