Papers - All

John A List, Warren McHone , Daniel L Millimet

Cited by*: 11 Downloads*: 8

Whether lax environmental regulations are an important attraction for mobile capital remains one of the most controversial issues in the area of regulatory federalism. While the extant literature does a nice job of estimating the effects of environmental regulation on the spatial allocation of new plant births, one neglected area of research is the effect that environmental regulation has on plant relocation decisions. This paper uses an annual (1980-90) county level panel data set to examine the relationship between air quality regulatory stringency and the destination choice of relocating plants. We estimate empirical models using both parametric and semi-nonparametric specifications. Empirical results from both models suggest that air quality regulations alter significantly the destination choices of relocating plants.

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.

Tanjim Hossain, John Morgan

Cited by*: 3 Downloads*: 8

We conducted 80 auctions on eBay. Forty of these auctions were for various popular music CDs while the remaining 40 auctions were for video games for Microsoft's Xbox gaming console. The revenue equivalence theorem states that any auction form having the same effective reserve price yields the same expected revenue. The effective reserve price on eBay consists of three components: the opening bid amount, the secret reserve amount, and the shipping and handling charge to keep the overall reserve level fixed. We set no secret reserve price and varied the opening bid and the shipping and handling charge to keep the overall reserve level fixed. When the effective reserve was $4, auctions with a low opening bid and high shipping charges attracted more bidders, earlier bidding, and yielded higher revenue than those with a high opening bid and low shipping charges. The same results hold only for Xbox games under the $8 effective reserve. Unlike the other treatments, where the reserve represents less than 30% of the retail price of the item, for CDs, the $8 effective reserve represents over 50% of the retail price of the item. In this treatment, we find no systematic difference in the number of bidders attracted to the auction or revenues as a function of how the effective reserve is allocated between opening bid and shipping charges. We show that these results can be accounted for by bounded-rational bidding behavior.

Sam Asher, Lorenzo Casaburi, Plamen Nikolov, Maoliang Ye

Cited by*: 2 Downloads*: 8

We study how gradualism -- increasing required levels ("thresholds") of contributions slowly over time rather than requiring a high level of contribution immediately -- affects individuals' decisions to contribute to a public project. Using a laboratory binary choice minimum-effort coordination game, we randomly assign participants to three treatments: starting and continuing at a high threshold, starting at a low threshold but jumping to a high threshold after a few periods, and starting at a low threshold and gradually increasing the threshold over time (the "gradualism" treatment). We find that individuals coordinate most successfully at the high threshold in the gradualism treatment relative to the other two groups. We propose a theory based on belief updating to explain why gradualism works. We also discuss alternative explanations such as reinforcement learning, conditional cooperation, inertia, preference for consistency, and limited attention. Our findings point to a simple, voluntary mechanism to promote successful coordination when the capacity to impose sanctions is limited.

Eric Bettinger, Robert Slonim

Cited by*: 13 Downloads*: 8

Economic research examining how educational intervention programs affect primary and secondary schooling focuses largely on test scores although the interventions can affect many other outcomes. This paper examines how an educational intervention, a voucher program, affected students' altruism. The voucher program used a lottery to allocate scholarships among low-income applicant families with children in K-8th grade. By exploiting the lottery to identify the voucher effects, and using experimental economic methods, we measure the effects of the intervention on childrens altruism. We also measure the voucher programs effects on parents' altruism and several academic outcomes including test scores. We find that the educational intervention positively affects students' altruism towards charitable organizations but not towards their peers. We fail to find statistically significant effects of the vouchers on parents' altruism or test scores.

Sarah Ahmed , John Beshears , James Choi , Joelle Friedman , Jonathan Kolstad, Suzanne Linck , John A List, George Loewenstein, Brigitte Madrain , Barbara McGill, Stacey Sinkula , Kevin Volpp

Cited by*: 3 Downloads*: 8

We report results from two surveys of representative samples of Americans with private health insurance. The first examines how well Americans understand, and believe they understand, traditional health insurance coverage. The second examines whether those insured under a simplified all-copay insurance plan will be more likely to engage in cost-reducing behaviors relative to those insured under a traditional plan with deductibles and coinsurance, and measures consumer preferences between the two plans. The surveys provide strong evidence that consumers do not understand traditional plans and would better understand a simplified plan, but weaker evidence that a simplified plan would have strong appeal to consumers or change their healthcare choices.

James Andreoni, John A List

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 8

No abstract available

Gerhard Klimeck, Anya Samek

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 8

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.

Shakun Mago, Anya Samek, Roman Sheremeta

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 8

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.

John A List, Jason F Shogren

Cited by*: 9 Downloads*: 8

n/a

Orly Sade, Charles Schnitzlein, Jaime Zender

Cited by*: 10 Downloads*: 8

An experimental approach is used to examine the performance of three different multi-unit auction designs: discriminatory, uniform-price with fixed supply, and uniform-price with endogenous supply. We find that the strategies of the individual bidders and the aggregate demand curves are inconsistent with theoretically identified equilibrium strategies. The discriminatory auction is found to be more susceptible to collusion than are the uniform-price auctions, and so contrary to theoretical predictions and previous experimental results the discriminatory auction provides the lowest average revenue. Consistent with theoretical predictions, bidder demands are more elastic with reducible supply or discriminatory pricing than in the uniform-price auction with fixed supply. Despite a lack of a priori differences across bidders, the discriminatory auction results in significantly more symmetric allocations.

Abigail Barr

Cited by*: 4 Downloads*: 8

This paper presents rigorous and direct tests of two assumptions relating to limited commitment and asymmetric information that underpin current models of risk pooling. A specially designed economic experiment involving 678 subjects across 23 Zimbabwean villages is used to solve the problems of observability and quantification that have frustrated previous attempts to conduct such tests. I find that more extrinsic commitment is associated with more risk pooling, but that more information is associated with less risk pooling. The first of these results accords with our expectations and assumptions. The second does not. I offer two explanations as to the origin of the second result and discuss their implications for how we view the assumptions made elsewhere in the literature. I also conduct a test of the relevance or external validity of the experimental results to our understanding of real risk pooling behaviour. In four out of the five villages for which the test could be conducted the networks of risk pooling contracts constructed during the experiment and the networks existing in real life were significantly correlated.

Stephan Meier

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 8

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.

Bradley J Ruffle, Richard Sosis

Cited by*: 11 Downloads*: 8

Time-consuming and costly religious rituals pose a puzzle for economists committed to rational choice theories of human behavior. We propose that either through selection or a causal relationship, the performance of religious rituals is associated with higher levels of cooperation. To test this hypothesis we design field experiments to measure the in-group cooperative behavior of members of religious and secular Israeli kibbutzim, communal societies for which mutual cooperation is a matter of survival. Our results show that religious males (the primary practitioners of collective religious ritual in Orthodox Judaism) are more cooperative than religious females, secular males and secular females. Moreover, the frequency with which religious males engage in collective religious rituals predicts well their degree of cooperative behavior.

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.

James Andreoni, Michael Callen, Karrar Hussain, Muhammad Yasir Khan, Charles Sprenger

Cited by*: 3 Downloads*: 7

We use structural estimates of time preferences to customize incentives for a sample of polio vaccinators during a series of door-to-door vaccination drives in Pakistan. Our investigation proceeds in three stages. First, we measure time preferences using intertemporal allocations of vaccinations. Second, we derive the mapping between these structural estimates and individually optimal incentives given a specific policy objective. Third, we experimentally evaluate the effect of matching contract terms to individual discounting patterns in a subsequent experiment with the same vaccinators. This exercise provides a test of the specific point predictions given by structural estimates of time preference. We document present bias among vaccinators and find that tailored contracts achieve the intended policy objective of smoothing intertemporal allocations of effort.

Uri Gneezy, John A List, Michael K Price

Cited by*: 12 Downloads*: 7

Social scientists have presented evidence that suggests discrimination is ubiquitous: women, nonwhites, and the elderly have been found to be the target of discriminatory behavior across several labor and product markets. Scholars have been less successful at pinpointing the underlying motives for such discriminatory patterns. We employ a series of field experiments across several market and agent types to examine the nature and extent of discrimination. Our exploration includes examining discrimination based on gender, age, sexual orientation, race, and disability. Using data from more than 3000 individual transactions, we find evidence of discrimination in each market. Interestingly, we find that when the discriminator believes the object of discrimination is controllable, any observed discrimination is motivated by animus. When the object of discrimination is not due to choice, the evidence suggests that statistical discrimination is the underlying reason for the disparate behavior.

Omar Al-Ubaydli, John A List, Danielle LoRe, Dana L Suskind

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 7

No abstract available

Andreas Lange, John A List, Michael K Price

Cited by*: 3 Downloads*: 7

The tontine, which is an interesting mixture of group annuity, group life insurance, and lottery, has a peculiar place in economic history. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it played a major role in raising funds to finance public goods in Europe, but today it is rarely encountered outside of a dusty footnote in actuarial course notes or as a means to thicken the plot of a murder mystery. This study provides a formal model of individual contribution decisions under a modern variant of the historical tontine mechanism that is easily implemented by private charities. Our model incorporates desirable properties of the historical tontine to develop a mechanism to fund the private provision of a public good. The tontine-like mechanism we derive is predicted to outperform not only the voluntary contribution mechanism but also another widely used mechanism: charitable lotteries. Our experimental test of the instrument provides some evidence of the beneficial effects associated with implementing tontine-like schemes. We find that the mechanism has particular power in cases where agents are risk-averse or in situations where substantial asymmetries characterize individual preferences for the public good.

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.