Papers - Artefactual

Andreas Lange, John A List, Michael K Price

Cited by*: 35 Downloads*: 33

This study explores the economics of charitable fund-raising. We begin by developing theory that examines the optimal lottery design while explicitly relaxing both risk-neutrality and preference homogeneity assumptions. We test our theory using a battery of experimental treatments and find that our theoretical predictions are largely confirmed. Specifically, we find that single and multiple prize lotteries dominate the voluntary contribution mechanism both in total dollars raised and the number of contributors attracted. Moreover, we find that the optimal fund-raising mechanism depends critically on the risk postures of potential contributors and preference heterogeneity.

Daniel Houser, John A List, Anya Samek

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 32

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.

Glenn W Harrison, Morten I Lau, Elisabet E Rutstrom

Cited by*: 378 Downloads*: 31

We estimate individual risk attitudes using controlled experiments in the field in Denmark. The experiments were carried out across Denmark using a representative sample of 253 people between 19 and 75 years of age. Risk attitudes are estimated for various individuals differentiated by socio-demographic characteristics. Our results indicate that the average Dane is risk averse, and that risk neutrality is an inappropriate assumption to apply. We also find that risk attitudes vary significantly with respect to several important socio-demographic variables such as age and education. However, we do not find any effect of sex on risk attitudes. Copyright The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics" 2007 .

Steven D Levitt, John A List

Cited by*: 51 Downloads*: 30

We can think of no question more fundamental to experimental economics than understanding whether, and under what circumstances, laboratory results generalize to naturally occurring environments. In this paper, we extend Levitt and List (2006) to the class of games in which financial payoffs and doing the right thing are not necessarily in conflict. We argue that behaviour is crucially linked to not only the preferences of people, but also the properties of the situation. By doing so, we are able to provide a road map of the psychological and economic properties of people and situations that might interfere with generalizability of laboratory result from a broad class of games.

Juan-Camilo Cardenas

Cited by*: 5 Downloads*: 30

This paper explores how wealth and inequality can affect self-governed solutions to commons dilemmas by constraining group cooperation. It reports a series of experiments in the field where subjects are actual commons users. Household data about the participants? context explain statistically the usually observed wide variation found within and across groups in similar experiments. Participants wealth and inequality reduced cooperation when groups were allowed to have face-toface communication between rounds. There are implications for a greater awareness of nonpayoff asymmetries affecting cooperation in heterogeneous groups, apart from heterogeneity in the payoffs structure of the game.

Glenn W Harrison, Morten I Lau, Elisabet E Rutstrom, Melonie B Williams

Cited by*: 219 Downloads*: 30

We estimate individual discount rates with respect to time streams of money using controlled laboratory experiments. These discount rates are elicited by means of field experiments involving real monetary rewards. The experiments were carried out across Denmark using a representative sample of 268 people between 19 and 75 years of age. Individual discount rates are estimated for various households differentiated by socio-demographic characteristics such as income and age. Our conclusions are that discount rates are constant over the 12-month to 3-year horizons used in these experiments, and that discount rates vary substantially with respect to several socio-demographic variables. Hence we conclude that it would be reasonable to assume constant discount rates for specific household types, but not the same rates across all households.

Dean S Karlan

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 28

Questions remain as to whether results from experimental economics are generalizable to real decisions in nonlaboratory settings. Furthermore, questions persist about whether social capital helps mitigate information asymmetries in credit markets. I examine whether behavior in two laboratory games, Trust and a Public Goods, predicts loan repayments to a Peruvian group-lending microfinance program. Since this program relies on social capital to enforce repayment, this tests the external validity of the games. Individuals identified as "trustworthy" by the Trust Game are indeed less likely to default on their loans. No similar support is found for the game's identification of "trusting" individuals.

Frode Alfnes, Maren E Bachke, Mette Wik

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 27

Most charity organizations depend on contributions from the general public, but little research is conducted on donor preferences. Do donors have geographical, recipient, or thematic preferences? We designed a conjoint analysis experiment in which people rated development aid projects by donating money in dictator games. We find that our sample show strong age, gender, regional, and thematic preferences. Furthermore, we find significant differences between segments. The differences in donations are consistent with differences in donors' attitudes toward development aid and their beliefs about differences in poverty and vulnerability of the recipients. The method here used for development projects can easily be adapted to elicit preferences for other kinds of projects that rely on gifts from private donors.

Steffen Andersen, Erwin Bulte, Uri Gneezy, John A List

Cited by*: 16 Downloads*: 27

No abstract available

David S Brookshire, Donald L Coursey, Howard Kunreuther

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 27

No abstract available

Christopher Blattman, Julian C. Jamison, Margaret Sheridan

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 26

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.

Steven D Levitt, John A List, Sally Sadoff

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 25

Although backward induction is a cornerstone of game theory, most laboratory experiments have found that agents are not able to successfully backward induct. We analyze the play of world-class chess players in the centipede game, which is ill-suited for testing backward induction, and in pure backward induction games--Race to 100 games. We find that chess players almost never play the backward induction equilibrium in the centipede game, but many properly backward induct in the Race to 100 games. We find no systematic within-subject relationship between choices in the centipede game and performance in pure backward induction games.

Jeff P Carpenter, Amrita Daniere, Lois Takahashi

Cited by*: 53 Downloads*: 25

We conduct experiments in urban slums to measure trust and cooperation and to see how behavior varies with demographic factors and associational measures of social capital. Overall, we find high contribution rates among Thai and Vietnamese participants in a voluntary contribution game, and we see that many participants are willing to signal their disapproval of free riding despite it being costly to do so. At the individual level, we find that behavior varies with many demographic factors and with many associational factors. However, these correlations often differ significantly between our two locations, indicating the role of culture, defined broadly.

Laura Schechter

Cited by*: 20 Downloads*: 25

Play in the traditional trust experiment depends both on trust beliefs and on levels of risk aversion. We ran two experiments with a diverse set of subjects in fifteen villages of rural Paraguay, the traditional trust experiment and a new experiment measuring only risk aversion. We find that risk attitudes are highly predictive of play in the trust game. In addition, omitting risk aversion as a regressor in trust regressions signficiantly changes the coefficients of important explanatory variables such as gender and wealth. We also use data on income and bet choice to calculate players' coefficients of relative risk aversion.

Joseph Henrich

Cited by*: 43 Downloads*: 24

No abstract available

Ronald G Cummings, Paul J Ferraro

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 24

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.

Glenn W Harrison, Steven J Humphrey, Arjan Verschoor

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 24

We review experimental evidence collected from risky choice experiments using poor subjects in Ethiopia, India and Uganda. Using these data we estimate that just over 50% of our sample behaves in accordance with expected utility theory and that the rest subjectively weight probability according to prospect theory. Our results show that inferences about risk aversion are robust to whichever model we adopt when we estimate each model separately. However, when we allow both models to explain portions of the data simultaneously, we infer risk aversion for subjects behaving according to expected utility theory and risk seeking behavior for subjects behaving according to prospect theory. We conclude that the current practice of designing policies under the assumption that one or other explains all behavior is fundamentally flawed.

Jim Engle-Warnick, Javier Escobal, Sonia Laszlo

Cited by*: 4 Downloads*: 23

No abstract available

Vegard Iversen, Cecile Jackson, Bereket Kebede, Alistair Munro, Arjan Verschoor

Cited by*: 7 Downloads*: 23

We test core theories of the household using variants of a public good game and experimental data from 240 couples in rural Uganda. Spouses do not maximise surplus from cooperation and realise a greater surplus when women are in charge. This violates assumptions of unitary and cooperative models. When women control the common account, they receive less than when men control it; this contradicts standard bargaining models. Women contribute less than men and are rewarded more generously by men than vice versa. This casts doubt on postulates in Sen (1990). While the absence of altruism is rejected, we find evidence for opportunism. The results are put in a socioeconomic context using quantitative and qualitative survey data. Assortative matching and correlates of bargaining power influence behaviour within the experiments. Our findings suggest that a one-size fits all?? model of the household is unlikely to be satisfactory.

William T Harbaugh, Kate Krause

Cited by*: 46 Downloads*: 23

We examine the development of altruistic and free-riding behavior in 6-12-year-old children. We find that the level of altruistic behavior in children is similar to that of adults but that repetition has a different effect. Younger children's contributions tend to increase in later rounds of the experiments, whereas the contributions of older children, like those of adults, tend to decline. Group attachment is associated with higher contributions. Contributions in a subsequent dictator experiment are correlated with first-roundn contributions in the public good experiment, but are not strongly correlated with last-round contributions.