Papers - All

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.

David H Reiley, Anya Samek

Cited by*: 5 Downloads*: 47

Direct mail fundraisers commonly provide a set of suggested donation amounts to potential donors, in addition to the option of writing in an amount. Yet little systematic evidence exists about the causal effects of suggested donation amounts on giving behavior. To this end, we conducted a field experiment on a direct mail solicitation to nearly 15,000 members of three public broadcasting stations. We varied (1) the vector of suggested amounts, and (2) whether the suggested amounts were fixed or varied as a proportion of the individual's previous donation. We find that increasing the vector of suggested amounts by about 20 percent statistically significantly reduces the overall probability of giving by about 15 percent. The overall impact on revenue is less clear, but appears to be somewhat negative. Higher suggested amounts also lead to write in amounts representing a greater proportion of donations. We attribute our result to the apparent cognitive cost of writing in a preferred amount that differs from a suggested amount. A second field experiment, in which we alter only one of the suggested amounts, gives evidence consistent with that theory and with the idea that donors prefer to give round numbers, as we see donors significantly more likely to give amounts of $90 or higher when suggested $100 versus $95.

Ty Feldkamp, Jayson L Lusk, Ted C Schroeder

Cited by*: 57 Downloads*: 47

Despite increased use of experimental auctions, a myriad of different procedures are being employed without formal consideration of how the procedures might affect results. The study investigates the effect of several procedural issues on valuation estimates from experimental auctions. Results indicate the second price auction generates higher valuations than English, Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM), and random nth price auctions, especially in latter bidding rounds, and that random nth price auction yields lower valuations than English and BDM auctions. We find that endowing subjects with a good prior to eliciting bids can have an impact on valuationsk, but the effect varies across auction mechanism.

Uzma Afzal, Giovanna d'Adda, Marcel Fafchamps, Farah Said

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 47

Theoretical and empirical work on intra-household decision making capture empowerment through bargaining weights given to individual preferences, and infer such weights from household consumption allocations. In this paper we test two key hypotheses underlying this work: first, that spousal influence is the same for all private consumption goods; and second, that women have pent up demand for pure agency. We use data from a survey and a novel laboratory experiment implemented with adult couples in Pakistan. We find that women's influence on household decisions is decreasing in the importance of the decision. We find no evidence that women have pent up demand for agency. Instead, women are less willing to pay for agency when facing an unknown man. We interpret this evidence as suggesting that women in our study population have internalized gender norms, and that these norms regulate interactions between genders most strongly outside of the household. We also find little evidence, within our experimental setting, that willingness to pay for agency is affected by the instrumental value of agency.

Hans P Binswanger

Cited by*: 126 Downloads*: 47

No abstract available

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.

Matthias Sutter

Cited by*: 20 Downloads*: 46

Economic decisions depend on both actual outcomes as well as perceived intentions. In this paper, we examine whether and how the relative importance of outcomes or intentions for economic decisions develops with age. We report the results of ultimatum games with children, teens and university students. We find that children and teens react systematically to perceived intentions, like university students do. However, children and teens reject unequal offers much more often than university students, indicating that outcomes are relatively more important than intentions for younger subjects. Hence, the relative importance of intentions increases with age.

John A List

Cited by*: 4 Downloads*: 46

No abstract available

John A List, Imran Rasul

Cited by*: 3 Downloads*: 46

We overview the use of field experiments in labor economics. We showcase studies that highlight the central advantages of this methodology, which include: (i) using economic theory to design the null and alternative hypotheses; (ii) engineering exogenous variation in real world economic environments to establish causal relations and learning about the underlying mechanisms; and (iii) engaging in primary data collection and often working closely with practitioners. To highlight the potential for field experiments to inform issues in labor economics, we organize our discussion around the individual life cycle. We therefore consider field experiments related to the accumulation of human capital, the demand and supply of labor, behavior within firms, and close with a brief discussion of the nascent literature of field experiments related to household decision-making.

Jonathan E Alevy, Craig E Landry, John A List

Cited by*: 4 Downloads*: 46

A pillar of behavioral research is that preferences are constructed during the process of choice. A prominent finding is that uninformative numerical "anchors" influence judgment and valuation. It remains unclear whether such processes influence market equilibria. We conduct two experiments that extend the study of anchoring to field settings. The first experiment produces evidence that some consumers' valuations can be anchored in novel situations; there is no evidence that experienced agents are influenced by anchors. The second experiment finds that anchors have only transient effects on market outcomes that converge to equilibrium predictions after a few market periods.

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, Michael K Price

Cited by*: 14 Downloads*: 45

The economics literature suggests that enhanced social connection can increase trust amongst agents, which can ultimately lead to more efficient economic outcomes, including increased provision of public goods. This study provides a test of whether social connectedness (proxied via agent similarities in race and gender) influences giving to a charitable fundraiser. Using data gathered from more than 2000 households approached in an actual door-to-door fundraising drive, we find limited evidence of the importance of such social connections. A robust result in the data, however, is that our minority solicitors, whether approaching a majority or minority household, are considerably less likely to obtain a contribution, and conditional on securing a contribution, gift size is lower than their majority counterparts receive.

Alan S Gerber, Donald P Green

Cited by*: 15 Downloads*: 45

We report the results of a randomized field experiment involving approximately 30,000 registered voters in New Haven, Connecticut. Nonpartisan get-out-the-vote messages were conveyed through personal canvassing, direct mail, and telephone calls shortly before the November 1998 election. A variety of substantive messages were used. Voter turnout was increased substantially by personal canvassing, slightly by direct mail, and not at all by telephone calls. These findings support our hypothesis that the long-term retrenchment in voter turnout is partly attributable to the decline in face-to-face political mobilization.

Melissa Bateson, Daniel Nettle, Gilbert Roberts

Cited by*: 52 Downloads*: 45

We examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image. This finding provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns, on human cooperative behaviour.

Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton, Esther Duflo

Cited by*: 23 Downloads*: 44

There is surprisingly little information about the delivery of health care in rural India, and about the relationship, if any, between health care and health status. Some, such as the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health of the World Health Organization (2001), have argued that better health care is the key to improving health as well as economic growth in poor countries, but there is little systematic evidence that gives us a sense of how easy it is to impact the quality of health care delivery in developing countries and through these improvements to impact the health of the population. This paper reports on a recent survey in a poor rural area of the state of Rajasthan in India intended to shed some light on this issue, where we use a set of interlocking surveys to collect data on health and economic status, as well as the public and private provision of health care.

Alexander W Cappelen, John A List, Anya Samek, Bertil Tungodden

Cited by*: 2 Downloads*: 44

We present results from the first study to examine the causal impact of early childhood education on social preferences of children. We compare children who, at 3-4 years old, were randomized into either a full-time preschool, a parenting program with incentives, or to a control group. We returned to the same children when they reach 7-8 years old a conducted a series of incentivized experiments to elicit there social preferences. We find that early childhood education has a strong causal impact on social preferences several years after the intervention: attending preschool makes children more egalitarian in their fairness view and the parenting program enhances the importance children place on efficiency relative to fairness. Our findings highlight the importance of taking a broad perspective when designing and evaluating early childhood education programs, and provide evidence how differences in institutional exposure may contribute to explaining heterogeneity in social preferences in society.

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

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 43

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.

Doris Weichselbaumer

Cited by*: 43 Downloads*: 43

Little research has been done to examine discrimination against gays and lesbians in the labor market. Wage regressions have documented lower incomes for gays but repeatedly showed higher incomes for lesbians. The results concerning lesbian women are striking but can be reconciled with the existence of labor market discrimination, however. Problems like sample selection and unobserved heterogeneity-in particular, lesbians' violation of stereotypical female gender roles- might be responsible for their higher earnings. To investigate whether discrimination against lesbians actually does exist, a labor market experiment is conducted. Job applications of candidates, who are equivalent in their human capital but differ in their sexual orientation, are sent out in response to job advertisements. Furthermore, to test whether increased masculinity affects labor market outcomes, the applicants differ in their perceived gender identity. While results show a strong negative effect for lesbian orientation, gender identity does not have a significant overall impact on hiring chances.

Sarah Lichtenstein, Paul Slovic

Cited by*: 37 Downloads*: 43

The present report describes an expanded replication of the previous experiments in a nonlaboratory real-play setting unique to the experimental literature on decision processes - a casino in downtown Las Vegas.

Maria P Espinosa, Javier Gardeazabal

Cited by*: 2 Downloads*: 43

A disadvantage of multiple-choice tests is that students have incentives to guess. To discourage guessing, it is common to use scoring rules that either penalize wrong answers or reward omissions. These scoring rules are considered equivalent in psychometrics, although experimental evidence has not always been consistent with this claim. We model students' decisions and show, first, that equivalence holds only under risk neutrality and, second, that the two rules can be modified so that they become equivalent even under risk aversion. This paper presents the results of a filed experiment in which we analyze the decisions of subjects taking multiple-choice exams. The evidence suggests that differences between scoring rules are due to risk aversion as theory predicts. We also find that the number of omitted items depends on the scoring rule, knowledge, gender, and other covariates.