Papers - Artefactual
John A List
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These are the slides from John A. List's keynote at the 2022 AFE conference.
U. Rashid Sumalia,
Daniel J Skerritt,
Anna Schuhbauer,
Sebastian Villasante,
Andres M Cisneros-Montemayor,
Hussain Sinan,
Duncan Burnside,
Patrízia Raggi Abdallah,
Keita Abe,
Juliano Palacios Abrantes,
Kwasi A Addo,
Julia Adelsheim,
Ibukun J Adewumi,
Olanike K Adeyemo,
Neil Adger,
Joshua Adotey,
Sahir Advani,
Zahidah Afrin,
Denis Aheto,
Shehu L Akintola,
Wisdom Akpalu,
Lubna Alam,
Juan José Alava,
Edward H Allison,
Diva J Amon,
John M Anderies,
Christopher M Anderson,
Evan Andrews,
Ronaldo Angelini,
Zuzy Anna,
Werner Antweiler,
Evans K Arizi,
Derek Armitage,
Robert I Arthur,
Noble Asare,
Frank Asche,
Berchie Asiedu,
Francis Asuquo,
Marta Flotats Aviles,
Lanre Badmus,
Megan Bailey,
Natalie Ban,
Edward B Barbier,
Shanta Barley,
Colin Barnes,
Scott Barrett,
Xavier Basurto,
Dyhia Belhabib,
Nathan J Bennett,
Elena Bennett,
Dominique Benzaken,
Robert Blasiak,
John J Bohorquez,
Cesar Bordehore,
Virginie Bornarel,
David R Boyd,
Denise Breitburg,
Cassandra Brooks,
Lucas Brotz,
Duncan Burnside,
Donovan Campbell,
Sara Cannon,
Ling Cao,
Juan C Cardenas Campo,
Griffin Carpenter,
Steve Carpenter,
Richard T Carson,
Adriana R Carvalho,
Mauricio Castrejón,
Alex J Caveen,
M Nicole Chabi,
Kai M A Chan,
F Stuart Chapin,
Tony Charles,
William Cheung,
Villy Christensen,
Ernest O Chuku,
Trevor Church,
Andrés M Cisneros-Montemayor,
Colin Clark,
Tayler M Clarke,
Andreea L Cojocaru,
Brian Copeland,
Brian Crawford,
Anne-Sophie Crépin,
Larry B Crowder,
Philippe Cury,
Allison N Cutting,
Gretchen C Daily,
Jose Maria Da-Rocha,
Abhipsita Das,
Savior K S Deikumah,
Mairin Deith,
Santiago de la Puente,
Boris Dewitte,
Nancy Doubleday,
Carlos M Duarte,
Nicholas K Dulvy,
Bárbara B Horta e Costa,
Tyler Eddy,
Maeghan Efford,
Paul R Ehrlich,
Laura G Elsler,
Kafayat A Fakoya,
A Eyiwunmi Falaye,
Jessica Fanzo,
Clare Fitzsimmons,
Ola Flaaten,
Katie R N Florko,
Carl Folke,
Andrew Forrest,
Peter Freeman,
Kátia M F Freire,
Rainer Froese,
Thomas L Frölicher,
Austin Gallagher,
Veronique Garcon,
Maria A Gasalla,
Mark Gibbons,
Kyle Gillespie,
Alfredo Giron-Nava,
Kristina Gjerde,
Sarah Glaser,
Christopher Golden,
Line Gordon,
Hugh Govan,
Rowenna Gryba,
Benjamin S Halpern,
Quentin Hanich,
Mafaniso Hara,
Christopher D G Harley,
Sarah Harper,
Michael Harte,
Rebecca Helm,
Cullen Hendrix,
Christina C Hicks,
Lincoln Hood,
Carie Hoover,
Kristen Hopewell,
Jonathan D R Houghton,
Johannes A Iitembu,
Moenieba Isaacs,
Sadique Isahaku,
Gakushi Ishimura,
Monirul Islam,
Ibrahim Issifu,
Jeremy Jackson,
Jennifer Jacquet,
Olaf P Jensen,
Xue Jin,
Alberta Jonah,
Jean-Baptiste Jouffray,
S Kim Juniper,
Sufian Jusoh,
Isigi Kadagi,
Masahide Kaeriyama,
Michel J Kaiser,
Brooks Alexandra Kaiser,
Omu Kakujaha-Matundu,
Selma T Karuaihe,
Mary Karumba,
Jennifer D Kemmerly,
Ahmed S Khan,
Katrick Kimani,
Kristin Kleisner,
Nancy Knowlton,
Dawn Kotowicz,
John Kurien,
Lian E Kwong,
Steven Lade,
Dan Laffoley,
Vicky W L Lam,
Glenn-Marie Lange,
Mohd T Latif,
Philippe Le Billon,
Valérie Le Brenne,
Frédéric Le Manach,
Simon A Levin,
Lisa Levin,
Karin E Limburg,
John A List,
Amanda T Lombard,
Priscila F M Lopes,
Heike K Lotze,
Tabitha G Mallory,
Roshni S Mangar,
Daniel Marszalec,
Precious Mattah,
Juan Mayorga,
Carol Mcausland,
DOuglas J McCauley,
Jeffrey McLean,
Karley McMullen,
Frank Meere,
Annie Mejaes,
Michael Melnychuk,
Jaime Mendo,
Fiorenza Micheli,
Katherine Millage,
Dana Miller,
Kolliyil Sunil Mohamed,
Essam Mohammed,
Mazlin Mokhtar,
Lance Morgan,
Umi Muawanah,
Gordon R Munro,
Grant Murray,
Saleem Mustafa,
Prateep Nayak,
Dianne Newell,
Tu Nguyen,
Frederik Noack,
Adibi M Nor,
Francis K E Nunoo,
David Obura,
Tom Okey,
Isaac Okyere,
Paul Onyango,
Maartje Oostdijk,
Polina Orlov,
Henrik Österblom,
Tessa Owens,
Dwight Owens,
Mohammed Oyinlola,
Nathan Pacoureau,
Evgeny Pakhomov,
Unai Pascual,
Aurélien Paulmier,
Daniel Pauly,
Rodrigue Orobiyi Edéya Pèlèbè,
Daniel Peñalosa,
Maria G Pennino,
Garry Peterson,
Thuy T T Pham,
Evelyn Pinkerton,
Stephen Polasky,
Nicholas V C Polunin,
Ekow Prah,
Ingrid Van Putten,
Jorge Ramírez,
Jorge Jimenez Ramon,
Veronica Relano,
Gabriel Reygondeau,
Don Robadue,
Callum Roberts,
Alex Rogers,
Katina Roumbedakis,
Enric Sala,
Gret Van Santen,
Marten Scheffer,
Anna Schuhbauer,
Kathleen Segerson,
Juan Carlos Seijo,
Karen C Seto,
Jason F Shogren,
Jennifer J Silver,
Hussain Sinan,
Gerald Singh,
Daniel J Skerritt,
Ambre Soszynski,
Dacotah-Victoria Splichalova,
Margaret Spring,
Jesper Stage,
Fabrice Stephenson,
Bryce D Stewart,
Riad Sultan,
U Rashid Sumaila,
Curtis Suttle,
Alessandro Tagliabue,
Amadou Tall,
Nicolás Talloni-Álvarez,
Alessandro Tavoni,
D R Fraser Taylor,
Lydia C L Teh,
Louise S L Teh,
Jean-Baptiste Thiebot,
Torsten Thiele,
Shakuntala H Thilsted,
Romola V Thumbadoo,
Michelle Tigchelaar,
Richard S J Tol,
Philippe Tortell,
Max Troell,
M Selçuk Uzmanoglu,
Sebastian Villasante,
Juan Villaseñor-Derbez,
Colette C C Wabnitz,
Melissa Walsh,
J P Walsh,
Nina Wambiji,
Elke U Weber,
Frances Westley,
Stella Williams,
Mary S Wisz,
Boris Worm,
Lan Xiao,
Nobuyuki Yagi,
Satoshi Yamazaki,
Hong Yang,
Aart de Zeeuw,
Dirk Zeller
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Letter in Science Magazine
John A List
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A summary of artefactual field experiments on fieldexperiments.com.
Yan Chen,
Peter Cramton,
John A List,
Axel Ockenfels
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We review past research and discuss future directions on how the vibrant research areas of market design and behavioral economics have influenced and will continue to impact the science and practice of management in both the private and public sectors. Using examples from various auction markets, reputation and feedback systems in online markets, matching markets in education, and labor markets, we demonstrate that combining market design theory, behavioral insights, and experimental methods can lead to fruitful implementation of superior market designs in practice.
James Andreoni,
Amalia Di Girolamo,
John A List,
Claire Mackevicius,
Anya Samek
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We conduct experiments eliciting risk preferences with over 1,400 children and adolescents aged 3-15 years old. We complement our data with an assessment of cognitive and executive function skills. First, we find that adolescent girls display significantly greater risk aversion than adolescent boys. This pattern is not observed among young children, suggesting that the risk gap in risk preferences emerges in early adolescence. Second, we find that at all ages in our study, cognitive skills (specifically math ability) are positively associated with risk taking. Executive functions among children, and soft skills among adolescents, are negatively associated with risk taking. Third, we find that greater risk-tolerance is associated with higher likelihood of disciplinary referrals, which provides evidence that our task is equipped to measure a relevant behavioral outcome. For academics, our research provides a deeper understanding of the developmental origins of risk preferences and highlights the important role of cognitive and executive function skills to better understand the association between risk preferences and cognitive abilities over the studied age range.
Luigi Butera,
Philip J Grossman,
Daniel Houser,
John A List,
Marie-Claire Villeval
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Creation of empirical knowledge in economics has taken a dramatic turn in the past few decades. One feature of the new research landscape is the nature and extent to which scholars generate data. Today, in nearly every field the experimental approach plays an increasingly crucial role in testing theories and informing organizational decisions. Whereas there is much to appreciate about this revolution, recently a credibility crisis has taken hold across the social sciences, arguing that an important component of Fischer (1935)'s tripod has not been fully embraced: replication. Indeed, while the importance of replications is not debatable scientifically, current incentives are not sufficient to encourage replications from the individual researcher's perspective. We propose a novel mechanism that promotes replications by leveraging mutually beneficial gains between scholars and editors. We develop a model capturing the trade-offs involved in seeking independent replications before submission of a paper to journals. We showcase our method via an investigation of the effects of Knightian uncertainty on cooperation rates in public goods games, a pervasive and yet largely unexplored feature in the literature.
Syon Bhanot,
Jiyoung Han,
Chaning Jang
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Restrictions like work requirements and constraints on voucher transfers are often used in social welfare systems, but little empirical evidence exists on their impact on wellbeing. We conducted a 10-day randomized experiment with 432 individuals living below the poverty line in the Kawangware settlement of Nairobi, kenya, testing two elements of social welfare design: workfare versus welfare and restricted versus unrestricted vouchers. Participants were randomly assigned to a "Work" condition, involving daily work for unrestricted vouchers, or one of two "Wait" conditions, involving daily waiting for vouchers that were either unrestricted or partially restricted to staple foods. We find that working improved psychological wellbeing relative to waiting, suggesting that means of implementing welfare programs may have important effects on individuals beyond the impact of monetary benefit alone. Furthermore, although restrictions were inframarginal, partially restricted vouchers crowded-in spending on staple foods, suggesting the existence of a "flypaper effect" in spending from restricted vouchers.
Marco Castillo,
John A List,
Ragan Petrie,
Anya Samek
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We use field experiments with nearly 900 children to investigate how skills developed at ages 3-5 drive later-life outcomes. We find that skills map onto three distinct factors - cognitive skills, executive functions, and economic preferences. Returning to the children up to 7 years later, we find that executive functions, but not cognitive skills, predict the likelihood of receiving disciplinary referrals. Economic preferences have an independent effect: children who displayed impatience at ages 3-5 were more likely to receive disciplinary referrals. Random assignment to a parenting program reduced disciplinary referrals. This effect was not mediated by skills or preferences.
Wojciech Hardy,
Michal Krawczyk,
Joanna Tyrowicz
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We report results of an experimental study analyzing the effects of Internet piracy on book sales. We conducted a year-long controlled large-scale field experiment with pre-treatment pair matching. Half of the book titles received experiment treatment, in which a specialized agency would immediately remove any unauthorized copy appearing on the Internet. For the other half we merely registered such occurrences, but no countermeasures were taken. For all the titles we obtained print and e-book sales statistics from the publishers. We find that removal of unauthorized copies was an effective method of curbing piracy, but this had no bearing on legal sales.
Omar Al-Ubaydli,
John A List
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This is a review of the literature of field experimental studies of markets. The main results covered by the review are as follows: (1) Generally speaking, markets organize the efficient exchange of commodities; (2) There are some behavioral anomalies that impede efficient exchange; (3) Many behavioral anomalies disappear when traders are experienced.
Hansika Kapoor,
Savita Kulkarni,
Anirudh Tagat
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This study aims to investigate intra-household bargaining outcomes elicited in an artefactual field experiment design where participants completed a purchase task of real commodities. Married couples separately expressed their initial preferences over commodities. The bargaining process in the experiment was exogenously introduced by sharing information about partners' preferences in the treatment group. We hypothesized that the spouse with weaker bargaining position at the household level would consider the information of their partner's preferences while making own consumption decisions more compared to their partner. Therefore, they may deviate from their own preferences when purchasing commodities. More than 230 married couples from two villages in the Tamil Nadu state of India participated in the experiment. It was observed that information about partners' spending preferences resulted in reduced final allocation for female participants. However, the deviation was not significantly different from the original intention to spend. Therefore, information about partners' preferences may not be an effective medium to elicit bargaining power in the context of jointly-consumed household commodities. Subgroup analyses were performed to identify any heterogeneous treatment effects.
John A List
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No abstract available
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 resources and engaging in other pro-social actions. In this paper we ask: do parents model social preference behavior to children, and do children emulate this behavior? We develop a theoretical framework to examine this question, and conduct an experiment with 147 3 to 5 year old children and their parents, using dictator games to measure generosity. We find (1) evidence of parental teaching/modeling in the case of fathers and in that of parents of relatively generous children, and (2) an emulation effect such that children who initially share less than half of their endowment subsequently share more the more they see a parent or other adult share. We find little correlation between baseline sharing of children and the parents, with the possible exception of the oldest children.
Omar Al-Ubaydli,
John A List,
Dana L Suskind
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Policymakers are increasingly turning to insights gained from the experimental method as a means of informing public policies. Whether-and to what extent-insights from a research study scale to the level of the broader public is, in many situations, based on blind faith. This scale-up problem can lead to a vast waste of resources, a missed opportunity to improve people's lives, and a diminution in the public's trust in the scientific method's ability to contribute to policymaking. This study provides a theoretical lens to deepen our understanding of the science of how to use science. Through a simple model, we highlight three elements of the scale-up problem: (1) when does evidence become actionable (appropriate statistical inference); (2) properties of the population; and (3) properties of the situation. We argue that until these three areas are fully understood and recognized by researchers and policymakers, the threats to scalability will render any scaling exercise as particularly vulnerable. In this way, our work represents a challenge to empiricists to estimate the nature and extent of how important the various threats to scalability are in practice, and to implement those in their original research.
Annika List,
John A List,
Anya Samek
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Social scientists for years have documented the pervasiveness of discrimination in product and labor markets. While the literature has recently attempted to measure the nature of such discrimination, much less work has been done exploring the origins of discrimination. We make a modest step in this direction by reporting data from a field experiment attempting to measure discrimination amongst 3-5 years olds. Using a design that isolated discriminatory behaviors in economic games, we find that both White and Hispanic children send more resources to Black children than White children, whereas black children send equal amounts. This provides a first glimpse that suggests preferences amongst the young do not show similar patterns as preferences of adults.
Omar Al-Ubaydli,
John A List,
Claire Mackevicius,
Min Sok Lee,
Dana L Suskind
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Policymakers are increasingly turning to insights gained from the experimental method as a means to inform large scale public policies. Critics view this increased usage as premature, pointing to the fact that many experimentally-tested programs fail to deliver their promise at scale. Under this view, the experimental approach drives too much public policy. Yet, if policymakers could be more confident that the original research findings would be delivered at scale, even the staunchest critics would carve out a larger role for experiments to inform policy. Leveraging the economic framework of Al-Ubaydli et al. (2019), we put forward 12 simple proposals, spanning researchers, policymakers, funders, and stakeholders, which together tackle the most vexing scalability threats. The framework highlights that only after we deepen our understanding of the scale up problem will we be on solid ground to argue that scientific experiments should hold a more prominent place in the policymaker's quiver.
John A List,
Ragan Petrie,
Anya Samek
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In the past several decades the experimental method has lent deep insights into economics. One surprising area that has contributed is the experimental study of children, where advances as varied as the evolution of human behaviors that shape markets and institutions to how early life influences shape later life outcomes have been explored. We first develop a framework for economic preference measurement that provides a lens into how to interpret data from experiments with children. Next, we survey work that provides general empirical insights within our framework. Finally, we provide 10 tips for pulling off experiments with children, including factors such as taking into account child competencies, causal identification, and logistical issues related to recruitment and implementation. We envision the experimental study of children as a high growth research area in the coming decades as social scientists begin to more fully appreciate that children are active participants in markets who (might) respond predictably to economic incentives.
Eszter Czibor,
David Jimenez-Gomez,
John A List
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What was once broadly viewed as an impossibility - learning from experimental data in economics - has now become commonplace. Governmental bodies, think tanks, and corporations around the world employ teams of experimental researchers to answer their most pressing questions. For their part, in the past two decades academics have begun to more actively partner with organizations to generate data via field experimentation. While this revolution in evidence-based approaches has served to deepen the economic science, recently a credibility crisis has caused even the most ardent experimental proponents to pause. This study takes a step back from the burgeoning experimental literature and introduces 12 actions that might help to alleviate this credibility crisis and raise experimental economics to an even higher level. In this way, we view our "12 action wish list" as discussion points to enrich the field.
Greg Allenby,
Russell Belk,
Catherine Eckel,
Robert Fisher,
Ernan Haruvy,
John A List,
Yu Ma,
Peter Popkowski Leszczyc,
Yu Wang,
Sherry Xin Li
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We offer a unified conceptual, behavioral, and econometric framework for optimal fundraising that deals with both synergies and discrepancies between approaches from economics, consumer behavior, and sociology. The purpose is to offer a framework that can bridge differences and open a dialogue between disciplines in order to facilitate optimal fundraising design. The literature is extensive, and our purpose is to offer a brief background and perspective on each of the approaches, provide an integrated framework leading to new insights, and discuss areas of future research.
John A List
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2022 Summary of Artefactual Experiments