Papers - All

David H Reiley

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This paper tests the empirical predictions of recent theories of the endogenous entry of bidders in auctions. Data come from a field experiment, involving sealed-bid auctions for collectible trading cards over the Internet. Manipulating the reserve prices in the auctions as an experimental treatment variable generates several results. First, observed participation behavior indicates that bidders consider their bid submission to be costly, and that bidder participation is indeed an endogenous decision. Second, the participation is more consistent with a mixed-strategy entry equilibrium than with a deterministic equilibrium. Third, the data reject the prediction that the profit- maximizing reserve price is greater than or equal to the auctioneer's salvage value for the good, showing instead that a zero reserve price provides higher expected profits in this case.

Jay R Corrigan, Matthew C Rousu

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Firms spend billions of dollars annually on new product and label designs in order to attract and retain customers. The issue of labeling is also important to government agencies and nonprofit labeling organizations. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has an organizational body in its Office of Nutritional Products that deals with issues of food and dietary supplement labeling. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service also deals with labeling through its Labeling and Consumer Protection Staff. These government agencies spend millions of dollars trying to ensure that food labels adequately inform consumers. One issue that has not been examined is the welfare difference to consumers from alternative labeling schemes/regulations. It seems likely that different labels would differ in effectiveness at informing consumers.

Carina Cavalcanti, Andreas Leibbrandt

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This paper investigates the role of dry promotions for community participation in eight Brazilian fishing villages. We randomly promoted some fishermen to assistants before the start of an environmental program, increasing their responsibilities but not providing any monetary compensation. Thereafter, we study whether they engage more in conservation behavior during this program. The data shows that promoted fishermen provide substantially more effort, which suggests that such promotions my be a cost-effective tool to stimulate cooperation and community participation.

Ryan D Friedrichs

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No abstract available

Kenneth Leonard, Melkiory Masatu

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The most important issue facing experimental economists is the generalizability of lab results. This letter examines more than 1200 doctor/patient consultations, in which scrutiny and duration of treatment were varied. We show that scrutiny has an important but short-lived effect.

Richard Martin, John Randal

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We describe a natural field experiment investigating donation behaviour. The setting was an art gallery where donations could be deposited into a transparent box in the foyer. Two aspects of the donation environment were manipulated: signs on the donation box and the initial contents of the box. We used three sign treatments: a control with no sign, a sign that thanked donors, and a sign that indicated donations would be matched. We used two initial contents treatments: one with relatively little money ($50) and one with four times as much. The average donation per donor was significantly larger in the $200 treatments but this was offset by a decrease in the propensity to donate. In the matching treatments donations were significantly larger both at the per donor and per visitor level. A control donate variable turned out to have the largest influence on donation behaviour: the day of the week. The average donation per visitor was 51% higher on Sundays, when compared to every other day of the week.

Stephan Meier

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Subsidizing charitable giving-for example, for victims of natural disasters-is very popular, not only with governments but also with private organizations. Many companies match their employees' charitable contributions, hoping that this will foster the willingness to contribute. However, systematic analyses of the effect of such a matching mechanism are still lacking. This article tests the effect of matching charitable giving in a randomized field experiment in the short and the long run. The donations of a randomly selected group were matched by contributions from an anonymous donor. The results support the hypothesis that a matching mechanism increases contributions to a public good. However, in the periods after the experiment, when matching donations have been stopped, the contribution rate declines for the treatment group. The matching mechanism leads to a negative net effect on the participation rate. The field experiment therefore provides evidence suggesting that the willingness to contribute may be undermined by a matching mechanism in the long run.

Melissa R Michelson, Herbert Villa Jr.

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Less than a third of Latinos vote in Presidential elections, while less than one fourth participate in Congressional elections. Turnout among young Latinos (age 18-25) is even lower. This paper describes the results of a field experiment aimed at increasing turnout among young Latinos in Fresno, California conducted in the fall of 2002. Canvassers went door-to-door during the final two weekends before Election Day to urge registered young people to go to the polls. Young people of all races/ethnicities were targeted. In addition to testing the effectiveness of personal contact and how this varies among registered voters of various races/ ethnicities, the project also included two imbedded experiments. First, the race/ethnicity of the canvassers was randomly assigned, to test whether Latinos and non-Latinos are equally effective at getting Latinos and non- Latinos to the polls. Second, the message delivered to contacted registered voters was randomly assigned, to test whether young Latinos are more receptive to a message which stresses group solidarity or one that emphasizes civic duty. The experiment demonstrates that Latino canvassers are better than non-Latinos at contacting young Latino voters, and that young Latinos are more receptive than are non-Latinos to door-todoor mobilization efforts.

Nick Drydakis

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A field experiment was contacted in order to unbiased test whether female ethnic minorities; Albanians, face housing discrimination by owners when they seek to rent a unit in Greece three years after the national adoption of the European anti-discrimination legislation. Replicated the commonest process to rent a unit in Greece; telephone contact, we investigated a big sample represented by 122 areas. Rationally classified them in three status groups, according to their average rent levels, we found that discrimination increased monotonically with areas' status. The estimated probability of Albanians to receive an invitation to investigate a unit was lower by 0.231 in low status areas, followed by 0.324 in medium status areas, and by 0.419 in high status areas than that of Greeks. Adjusted for intra-class correlation the estimated differentials were found to be statistically significant. Similarly, we estimated an insignificant rent penalty against Albanians of 0.010 in low status areas, and significant penalties of 0.015 in medium status areas and of 0.023 in high status areas against Albanians. Consequently, a taste and/or statistical discrimination implied against Albanian seekers. Interestingly, the study enabled to estimate further that good rental housings are in significant degree unavailable to Albanians restricted their freedom in selecting a place to live. Specifically, Albanian seekers faced significantly less probabilities to investigate newer, busheled and units placed in floor than Greeks. Whilst, Albanians in order to have access to good units they had to pay more than Greeks. Finally, we estimated that female owners practiced significantly more availability constraints to Albanians than male owners. The current research contributes to two areas that have attracted scarce research attention in Greece: the experimental investigation of housing discrimination and discrimination by ethnicity. The results of this study have implications for understanding some of the enduring patterns of ethnic discrimination in the housing market.

Ryan D Friedrichs, David C King, David W Nickerson

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Recent large-scale field experiments of get out the vote (GOTV) drives have been non-partisan and may not accurately capture the effectiveness of partisan campaign outreach. In the 2002 Michigan gubernatorial election, a large field experiment across 14 state house districts evaluated the cost effectiveness of three mobilization technologies utilized by the Michigan Democratic Party's Youth Coordinated Campaign: door hangers, volunteer phone calls, and face-to-face visits. The results indicate that all three GOTV strategies possess similar cost-effectiveness.

Niklas Bengtsson, Per Engstrom

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Results in behavioral economics suggest that material incentives can crowd out effort, if agents are mission-oriented rather than self-interested. We test this prediction on a sample of nonprofit organizations in Sweden. Swedish nonprofit organizations receive tax funds annually to promote global development issues through information campaigns. Traditionally, the contract with the main principal (the Swedish foreign aid agency) has been based on trust and self-regulation. We designed an experimental policy intervention, effectively replacing the trust-based contract with an increased level of monitoring from the principal, along with a threat to cut future funds if irregularities were detected. Our findings are inconsistent with (strong) motivational crowd-out. Overall, using both self-reported and observed measures of outreach, we find that the intervention improved efficiency. Graphical analysis shows that non-monitored organizations exhibit a distinct tendency to maximize expenditure; in contrast, organizations in the treatment group are more likely to return unused grants to Sida. Additionally, we find no crowding out of private contributions and no evidence of a "discouraged NGO"-syndrome.

Lorenz Goette, Alois Stutzer, Michael Zehnder

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In this paper, we propose a decision framework where people are individually asked to either actively consent or dissent to some pro-social behavior. We hypothesize that confronting individuals with the choice of engaging in a specific pro-social behavior contributes to the formation of issue-specific altruistic preferences while simultaneously involving a commitment. The hypothesis is tested in a large-scale field experiment on blood donation. We find that this "active-decision" intervention substantially increases the stated willingness to donate blood, as well as the actual donation behavior of people who have not fully formed preferences beforehand.

Tanjim Hossain, John Morgan

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We use field and natural experiments in online auctions to study the revenue effect of varying the level and disclosure of shipping charges. Our main findings are (1) disclosure affects revenues-for low shipping charges, a seller is better off disclosing; and (2) increasing shipping charges boosts revenues when these charges are hidden. These results are not explained by changes in the number of bidders.

Steven D Levitt, John A List, Susanne Neckermann, Sally Sadoff

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Research on behavioral economics has established the importance of factors such as reference dependent preferences, hyperbolic preferences, and the value placed on non-financial rewards. To date, these insights have had little impact on the way the educational system operates. Through a series of field experiments involving thousands of primary and secondary school students, we demonstrate the power of behavioral economics to influence educational performance. Several insights emerge. First, we find that incentives framed as losses have more robust effects than comparable incentives framed as gains. Second, we find that non-financial incentives are considerably more cost-effective than financial incentives for younger students, but were not effective with older students. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, consistent with hyperbolic discounting, all motivating power of the incentives vanishes when rewards are handed out with a delay. Since the rewards to educational investment virtually always come with a delay, our results suggest that the current set of incentives may lead to under-investment. For policymakers, our findings imply that in the absence of immediate incentives, many students put forth low effort on standardized tests, which may create biases in measures of student ability, teacher value added, school quality, and achievement gaps.

Luke N Condra, Mohammad Isaqzadeh, Sera Linardi

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Does willingness to aid "others" change when in their physical presence? We argue that studies cueing non-coethnics through names and photos may underestimate discrimination resulting from actual interethnic interaction. In an experiment in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dari-speaking day-laborers contribute their earnings to a hospital under one of three randomly-assigned experimental conditions. In In-group, the hospital is in a Dari-speaking province; in Out-group-Abstract and Out-group-Real, it is in a Pashto-speaking (Pashtun) province. While subjects in In-group and Outgroup- Abstract wait for the experiment with only Dari-speakers present, subjects in Out-group-Real wait among both Dari-speakers and Pashto-speakers. When Pashtuns are absent, the findings accord with other experiments that find little to no out-group discrimination. However, the physical presence of Pashtuns (Out-group-Real) decreases contributions by 25%. Consistent with the threat hypothesis, contributions decrease the longer Dari-speakers wait with Pashtuns, though subjects' youth and ability to speak Pashto mediate this effect.

Christopher Blattman, Julian C. Jamison, Margaret Sheridan

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We show that a number of "non cognitive" skills and preferences, including patience and identity, are malleable in adults, and that investments in them reduce crime and violence. We recruited criminally-engaged men and randomized half to eight weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy designed to foster self-regulation, patience, and a noncriminal identity and lifestyle. We also randomized $200 grants. Cash alone and therapy alone initially reduced crime and violence, but effects dissipated over time. When cash followed therapy, crime and violence decreased dramatically for at least a year. We hypothesize that cash reinforced therapy's impacts by prolonging learning-by-doing, lifestyle changes, and self-investment.

Jasper Knockaert, Stefanie Peer, Erik T Verhoef

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If left unidentified and uncorrected, self-selection biases may greatly compromise the external validity of the outcomes of field experiments. We show that self-selection biases in terms of observed und unobserved characteristics can be well identified and corrected by means of a complementary stated preference (SP) experiment conducted among the participants and non-participants of a field experiment. In the SP experiment, respondents are confronted with hypothetical choice situations that closely resemble the choice situations present in the field experiment. The SP experiment does not only allow us to compare participants and non-participants with respect to their behavior and implied preferences in the hypothetical choice situations, but also renders it possible to infer how non-participants would have behaved if they had decided to participate, using an innovative modeling approach to elicit the corresponding preference structures. We apply this approach in the context of a large-scale field experiment in which train commuters received monetary rewards for traveling outside peak hours. We find strong self-selection biases, especially with respect to the marginal utility of income, which is significantly higher among participants of the field experiment.

Fadi Hassan, Paolo Lucchino

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More than 1.3 billion people worldwide have no access to electricity and this has first-order effects on several development dimensions. In this paper we focus on the link between access to light and education. We randomly distribute solar lamps to 7th grade pupils in rural Kenya and monitor their educational outcomes throughout the year at quarterly frequency. We find that access to lights through solar lamps is a relevant and effective input to education. Our identification strategy accounts for spillovers by exploiting the variation in treatment at the pupil level and in treatment intensity across classes. We find a positive and significant intention-to-treat effect as well as a positive and significant spillover effect on control students. In a class with the average treatment intensity of our sample (43%), treated students experience an increase in math grades of 0.88 standard deviations. Moreover, we find a positive marginal effect of treatment intensity on control students: raising the share of treated students in a class by 10% increases grades of control students by 0.22 standard deviations. We exploit household geolocation to disentangle within-class and geographical spillovers. We show that geographical spillovers do not have a significant impact and within-school interaction is the main source of spillovers. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that the mechanism through which lamps affect students is by increasing co-studying at school especially after sunset.

Zachary S Brown

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Default options have been shown to affect behavior in a variety of economic choice tasks, including health care and retirement savings. Less research has tested whether defaults affect behavior in the domain of energy efficiency. This study uses data from a randomized controlled experiment in which the default settings on office thermostats in an OECD office building were manipulated during the winter heating season, and chosen thermostat setting observed over a six week period. Using difference-in-differences, panel, and censored regression models (to control for maximum allowable thermostat settings), we find that small decreases in the default led to a greater reduction in chosen settings than large decreases. We also find that office occupants who are more apt to adjust their thermostats prior to the intervention were less susceptible to the default. We find no evidence that offices with multiple occupants displayed different patterns in thermostat choices than single-occupant offices. We conclude that this kind of intervention can increase building energy efficiency, and discuss broader policy implications of our findings.

John A List

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 19

No abstract available