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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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- Experiments (3)
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Articles 1 - 30 of 49
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Doors Of Perception, Gary Charness, Alessandro Sontuoso
The Doors Of Perception, Gary Charness, Alessandro Sontuoso
ESI Working Papers
We investigate how a player’s strategic behavior is affected by the set of notions she uses in thinking about the game, i.e., the “frame”. To do so, we consider matching games where two players are presented with a set of objects, from which each player must privately choose one (with the goal of matching the counterpart’s choice). We propose a novel theory positing that different player types are aware of different attributes of the strategy options, hence different frames; we then rationalize why differences in players’ frames may lead to differences in choice behavior. Unlike previous theories of framing, our …
Predicting Market Trends: Effects Of Gdp And Pmi On Changes In Stock Closing Prices, Charley Renna
Predicting Market Trends: Effects Of Gdp And Pmi On Changes In Stock Closing Prices, Charley Renna
Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters
In an effort to learn more about the impact of certain economic variables on the stock market, I chose to analyze the impact that the Purchasing Managers’ Index and U.S. Gross Domestic Product have on three major stock indices: S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq 100. The PMI is an index of the direction of economic trends in the manufacturing and services sector. Released on the first business day of every month, it consists of a diffusion index that summarizes whether market conditions are expanding, staying the same, or contracting. An index level greater than 50 percent suggests …
Harnessing The Power Of Social Incentives To Curb Shirking In Teams, Brice Corgnet, Brian C. Gunia, Roberto Hernán González
Harnessing The Power Of Social Incentives To Curb Shirking In Teams, Brice Corgnet, Brian C. Gunia, Roberto Hernán González
ESI Working Papers
We study several solutions to shirking in teams that trigger social incentives by reshaping the workplace social context. Using an experimental design, we manipulate social pressure at work by varying the type of workplace monitoring and the extent to which employees engage in social interaction. This design allows us to assess the effectiveness as well as the popularity of each solution. Despite similar effectiveness in boosting productivity across solutions, only organizational systems involving social interaction (via chat) were at least as popular as a baseline treatment. This suggests that any solution based on promoting social interaction is more likely to …
News-Driven Expectations And Volatility Clustering, Sabiou M. Inoua
News-Driven Expectations And Volatility Clustering, Sabiou M. Inoua
ESI Working Papers
Financial volatility obeys two well-established empirical properties: it is fat-tailed (power-law distributed) and it tends to be clustered in time. Many interesting models have been proposed to account for these regularities, notably agent-based computational models, which typically invoke complicated mechanisms, however. It can be shown that trend-following speculation generates the power law in an intrinsic way. But this model cannot exaplain clustered volatility. This paper extends the model and offers a simple explanation for clustered volatility: the impact of exogenous news on traders’ expectations. Owing to the famous no-trade results, rational expectations, the dominant model of news-driven expectations, is hard …
Price Signaling And Bargain Hunting In Markets With Partially Informed Populations, Mark Schneider, Daniel Graydon Stephenson
Price Signaling And Bargain Hunting In Markets With Partially Informed Populations, Mark Schneider, Daniel Graydon Stephenson
ESI Working Papers
Classical studies of asymmetric information focus on situations where only one side of a market is informed. This study experimentally investigates a more general case where some sellers are informed and some buyers are informed. We establish the existence of semiseparating perfect Bayesian equilibria where prices serve as informative signals of quality to uninformed buyers, while informed buyers can often leverage their informational advantage by purchasing high quality items from uninformed sellers at bargain prices. These models provide a rational foundation for the co-existence of bargains, price signaling, and Pareto efficiency in markets with asymmetric information. We test these theoretical …
Identity And The Self-Reinforcing Effects Of Norm Compliance, Mark A. Pickup, Erik O. Kimbrough, Eline A. Rooij
Identity And The Self-Reinforcing Effects Of Norm Compliance, Mark A. Pickup, Erik O. Kimbrough, Eline A. Rooij
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
When making political and economic decisions (e.g., voting, donating money to a cause), individuals consider the expectations of groups with which they identify. These expectations are injunctive norms, shared beliefs about appropriate behavior for identity group members, and individuals' choices reflect trade‐offs between adherence to these norms and other preferences. We show that when those who identify moderately/strongly with the group pay a cost as a consequence of avoiding a norm violation, they subsequently view the norms as stronger than those that paid no cost. This is evident in their greater willingness to pay an additional cost to punish/reward other …
Do Appeals To Donor Benefits Raise More Money Than Appeals To Recipient Benefits? Evidence From A Natural Field Experiment With Pick.Click.Give., John A. List, James J. Murphy, Michael K. Price, Alexander G. James
Do Appeals To Donor Benefits Raise More Money Than Appeals To Recipient Benefits? Evidence From A Natural Field Experiment With Pick.Click.Give., John A. List, James J. Murphy, Michael K. Price, Alexander G. James
ESI Working Papers
We partnered with Alaska’s Pick.Click.Give. Charitable Contributions Program to implement a statewide natural field experiment with 540,000 Alaskans designed to explore whether targeted appeals emphasizing donor benefits through warm glow impact donations. Results highlight the relative import of appeals to self. Individuals who received such an appeal were 4.5 percent more likely to give and gave 20 percent more than counterparts in the control group. Yet, a message that instead appealed to recipient benefits had no effect on average donations relative to the control group. We also find evidence of long-run effects of warm glow appeals in the subsequent year.
A Class Of N-Player Colonel Blotto Games With Multidimensional Private Information, Christian Ewerhart, Dan Kovenock
A Class Of N-Player Colonel Blotto Games With Multidimensional Private Information, Christian Ewerhart, Dan Kovenock
ESI Working Papers
We consider a class of incomplete-information Colonel Blotto games in which N ≥ 2 agents are engaged in (N + 1) battlefields. An agent’s vector of battlefield valuations is drawn from a generalized sphere in Lp-space. We identify a Bayes-Nash equilibrium in which any agent’s resource allocation to a given battlefield is strictly monotone in the agent’s valuation of that battlefield. In contrast to the single-unit case, however, agents never enjoy any information rent. We also outline an extension to networks of Blotto games.
Cooperation In Indefinitely Repeated Helping Games: Existence And Characterization, Gabriele Camera, Alessandro Gioffré
Cooperation In Indefinitely Repeated Helping Games: Existence And Characterization, Gabriele Camera, Alessandro Gioffré
ESI Working Papers
Experiments that investigate the spontaneous emergence of money in laboratory societies rely on indefinitely repeated helping games with random matching (Camera et al., 2013; Camera and Casari, 2014). An important open issue is the lack of a general proof of existence of an equilibrium capable of supporting the efficient allocation under private monitoring, without money. Here, we fill this gap by offering a general proof, as well as by characterizing the efficient non-monetary equilibrium. This technique can be extended to study games with simultaneous actions.
Breaking Up: Experimental Insights Into Economic (Dis)Integration, Gabriele Camera, Lukas Hohl, Rolf Weder
Breaking Up: Experimental Insights Into Economic (Dis)Integration, Gabriele Camera, Lukas Hohl, Rolf Weder
ESI Working Papers
Standard international economic theory suggests that people should embrace economic integration because it promises large gains. But recent events such as Brexit indicate a desire for economic disintegration. Here we report results of an experiment, based on a strategic analytical framework, of how size and distribution of potential gains from integration influence outcomes and individuals’ inclination to embrace integration. We find that cross-country inequality in potential gains acts as a friction to realize those gains. This suggests that to better understand recent phenomena, international economic theory should account for distributional considerations and behavioral aspects it currently ignores.
Make It Too Difficult And I’Ll Give-Up; Let Me Succeed And I’Ll Excel: The Interaction Between Assigned And Personal Goals, James Fan, Joaquin Gomez-Minambres, Samuel Smithers
Make It Too Difficult And I’Ll Give-Up; Let Me Succeed And I’Ll Excel: The Interaction Between Assigned And Personal Goals, James Fan, Joaquin Gomez-Minambres, Samuel Smithers
ESI Working Papers
We examine the motivational effects of setting both assigned and personal non-binding goals on a real effort laboratory experiment. In order to derive conjectures for our experiment, we develop a model with goal-dependent preferences. In line with previous studies, we find that goal setting leads to a higher performance. We also find that goal-setting is most effective if subjects were able to achieve previous goals. Therefore, in goal setting, “success breeds success”. In particular, we observe that when subjects are initially allowed to attain assigned goals, they are better at self-motivating in the future when performing under personal goals.
Investment Choice Architecture In Trust Games: When “All-In” Is Not Enough, Joaquin Gómez-Miñambres, Eric Schniter, Timothy W. Shields
Investment Choice Architecture In Trust Games: When “All-In” Is Not Enough, Joaquin Gómez-Miñambres, Eric Schniter, Timothy W. Shields
ESI Working Papers
While many economic interactions feature “All-or-Nothing” options nudging investors towards going “all-in”, such designs may unintentionally affect reciprocity. We manipulate the investor’s action space in two versions of the “trust game”. In one version investors can invest either “all” their endowment or “nothing”. In the other version, they can invest any amount of the endowment. Consistent with our intentions-based model, we show that "all-or-nothing” designs coax more investment but limit investors’ demonstrability of intended trust. As a result, “all-in” investors are less generously reciprocated than when they can invest any amount, where full investments are a clearer signal of trustworthiness.
Labor Contracts, Gift-Exchange And Reference Wages: Your Gift Need Not Be Mine!, Hernán Bejerano, Brice Corgnet, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres
Labor Contracts, Gift-Exchange And Reference Wages: Your Gift Need Not Be Mine!, Hernán Bejerano, Brice Corgnet, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres
ESI Working Papers
We extend Akerlof’s (1982) gift-exchange model to the case in which reference wages respond to changes in the work environment such as those related to unemployment benefits or workers’ productivity levels. Our model shows that these changes spur disagreements between workers and employers regarding the value of the reference wage. These disagreements tend to weaken the gift-exchange relationship thus reducing production levels and wages. We find support for these predictions in a controlled, yet realistic, workplace environment. Our work also sheds light on several stylized facts regarding employment relationships such as the increased intensity of labor conflicts when economic conditions …
Nonbinding Goals In Teams: A Real Effort Coordination Experiment, James Fan, Joaquin Gómez-Miñambres
Nonbinding Goals In Teams: A Real Effort Coordination Experiment, James Fan, Joaquin Gómez-Miñambres
ESI Publications
Problem definition: We investigate the impact of nonbinding (wage-irrelevant) goals, set by a manager, on a team of workers with “weak-link” production technology. Can nonbinding goals improve team production when team members face production complementarity? Academic/practical relevance: Nonbinding goals are easy to implement and ubiquitous in practice. These goals have been shown to improve individual performance, but it remains to be seen if such goals are effective in team production when there is production complementarity among workers. Methodology: We first develop a theoretical model where goals act as reference points for workers’ intrinsic motivation to complete the …
Give Me A Challenge Or Give Me A Raise, Aleksandr Alekseev
Give Me A Challenge Or Give Me A Raise, Aleksandr Alekseev
ESI Working Papers
I study the effect of task difficulty on workers' effort and compare it to the effect of monetary rewards in an incentivized lab experiment. I find that task difficulty has an inverse-U effect on effort, and that this effect is quantitatively large when compared to the effect of conditional monetary rewards. Difficulty acts as a mediator of monetary rewards: conditional rewards are most effective at the intermediate or high levels of difficulty. I show that the inverse-U pattern of effort response to difficulty is not consistent with the Expected Utility model but is consistent with the Rank-Dependent Utility model that …
Self-Selecting Into Being A Dictator: Distributional Consequences, Lara Ezquerra, Praveen Kujal
Self-Selecting Into Being A Dictator: Distributional Consequences, Lara Ezquerra, Praveen Kujal
ESI Working Papers
We allow for principals to self-select into delegating, or not, the allocation decision to an agent in a modified dictator game. The standard dictator game arises when principal´s choose to make the allocation decision themselves. Dictators thus obtained transfer lower amounts to receivers, relative to when the decision making is passed to an agent under delegation (or in the standard dictator game). Principals choose to be a dictator nearly half of the time. The average amount transferred by individuals who delegate in more than half of the rounds is significantly higher than the quantity transferred by those who choose to …
Lying And Shirking Under Oath, Nicolas Jacquemet, Alexander James, Stéphane Luchini, James J. Murphy, Jason F. Shogren
Lying And Shirking Under Oath, Nicolas Jacquemet, Alexander James, Stéphane Luchini, James J. Murphy, Jason F. Shogren
ESI Working Papers
This study explores whether an oath to honesty can reduce both shirking and lying among crowd-sourced internet workers. Using a classic coin-flip experiment, we first show that a substantial majority of Mechanical Turk workers both shirk and lie when reporting the number of heads flipped. We then demonstrate lying can be reduced by first asking each worker to swear voluntarily on his or her honor to tell the truth in subsequent economic decisions. The oath, however, did not reduce shirking as measured by time- at-coin-flip-task, although it did increase the time they spent answering a demographic survey. Conditional on response, …
Computed Tomography Shows High Fracture Prevalence Among Physically Active Forager-Horticulturalists With High Fertility, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Horus Study Team, Caleb E. Finch, Dong Li, Matthew J. Budoff, Hillard Kaplan, Michael D. Gurven
Computed Tomography Shows High Fracture Prevalence Among Physically Active Forager-Horticulturalists With High Fertility, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Horus Study Team, Caleb E. Finch, Dong Li, Matthew J. Budoff, Hillard Kaplan, Michael D. Gurven
ESI Publications
Modern humans have more fragile skeletons than other hominins, which may result from physical inactivity. Here, we test whether reproductive effort also compromises bone strength, by measuring using computed tomography thoracic vertebral bone mineral density (BMD) and fracture prevalence among physically active Tsimane forager-horticulturalists. Earlier onset of reproduction and shorter interbirth intervals are associated with reduced BMD for women. Tsimane BMD is lower versus Americans, but only for women, contrary to simple predictions relying on inactivity to explain skeletal fragility. Minimal BMD differences exist between Tsimane and American men, suggesting that systemic factors other than fertility (e.g. diet) do not …
Kinship, Fractionalization And Corruption, Mahsa Akbari, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Erik O. Kimbrough
Kinship, Fractionalization And Corruption, Mahsa Akbari, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Erik O. Kimbrough
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
We examine the roots of variation in corruption across societies, and we argue that marriage practices and family structure are an important, overlooked determinant of corruption. By shaping patterns of relatedness and interaction, marriage practices influence the relative returns to norms of nepotism/favoritism versus norms of impartial cooperation. In-marriage (e.g. consanguineous marriage) generates fractionalization because it yields relatively closed groups of related individuals and thereby encourages favoritism and corruption. Out-marriage creates a relatively open society with increased interaction between non-relatives and strangers, thereby encouraging impartiality. We report a robust association between in-marriage practices and corruption both across countries and within …
Adding Tournament To Tournament: Combining Between-Team And Within-Team Incentives, Michael Majerczyk, Roman Sheremeta, Yu Tian
Adding Tournament To Tournament: Combining Between-Team And Within-Team Incentives, Michael Majerczyk, Roman Sheremeta, Yu Tian
ESI Working Papers
We examine theoretically and experimentally how combining between-team and within-team incentives affects behavior in team tournaments. Theory predicts that free-riding will occur when there are only between-team incentives, and offering within-team incentives may solve this problem. However, if individuals collude, then within-team incentives may not be as effective at reducing free-riding. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, the results of our experiment indicate that although between-team incentives are effective at increasing individual effort, there is substantial free-riding and declining effort over time. Importantly, a combination of between-team and within-team incentives is effective not only at generating effort but also at sustaining …
A Dynamical Systems Approach To Cryptocurrency Stability, Carey Caginalp
A Dynamical Systems Approach To Cryptocurrency Stability, Carey Caginalp
ESI Publications
Recently, the notion of cryptocurrencies has come to the fore of public interest. These assets that exist only in electronic form, with no underlying value, offer the owners some protection from tracking or seizure by government or creditors. We model these assets from the perspective of asset flow equations developed by Caginalp and Balenovich, and investigate their stability under various parameters, as classical finance methodology is inapplicable. By utilizing the concept of liquidity price and analyzing stability of the resulting system of ordinary differential equations, we obtain conditions under which the system is linearly stable. We find that trend-based motivations …
The Dynamics Of Men's Cooperation And Social Status In A Small-Scale Society, Christopher Von Rueden, Daniel Redhead, Rick O'Gorman, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven
The Dynamics Of Men's Cooperation And Social Status In A Small-Scale Society, Christopher Von Rueden, Daniel Redhead, Rick O'Gorman, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven
ESI Publications
We propose that networks of cooperation and allocation of social status co-emerge in human groups. We substantiate this hypothesis with one of the first longitudinal studies of cooperation in a preindustrial society, spanning 8 years. Using longitudinal social network analysis of cooperation among men, we find large effects of kinship, reciprocity and transitivity in the nomination of cooperation partners over time. Independent of these effects, we show that (i) higher-status individuals gain more cooperation partners, and (ii) individuals gain status by cooperating with individuals of higher status than themselves. We posit that human hierarchies are more egalitarian relative to other …
Co-Enforcement Of Common Pool Resources: Experimental Evidence From Turfs In Chile, Carlos A. Chávez, James J. Murphy, John K. Stranlund
Co-Enforcement Of Common Pool Resources: Experimental Evidence From Turfs In Chile, Carlos A. Chávez, James J. Murphy, John K. Stranlund
ESI Working Papers
This work presents the results of framed field experiments designed to study the co-enforcement of access to common pool resources. The experiments were conducted in the field with participants in the territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs) management scheme that regulates access to nearshore fisheries along the coast of Chile. In the experiments, TURF members not only decided on harvest but also invested in monitoring to deter poaching by outsiders. Treatments varied whether the monitoring investment was an individual decision or determined by a group vote. Per-unit sanctions for poaching were exogenous as if provided by a government authority, and …
Kinship Ties Across The Lifespan In Human Communities, Jeremy Koster, Dieter Lukas, David Nolin, Eleanor Power, Alexandra Alvergne, Ruth Mace, Cody T. Ross, Karen Kramer, Russell Graves, Mark Caudell, Shane Macfarlan, Eric Schniter, Robert Quinlan, Siobhan Mattison, Adam Reynolds, Chun Yi-Sim, Eric Massengill
Kinship Ties Across The Lifespan In Human Communities, Jeremy Koster, Dieter Lukas, David Nolin, Eleanor Power, Alexandra Alvergne, Ruth Mace, Cody T. Ross, Karen Kramer, Russell Graves, Mark Caudell, Shane Macfarlan, Eric Schniter, Robert Quinlan, Siobhan Mattison, Adam Reynolds, Chun Yi-Sim, Eric Massengill
ESI Publications
A hypothesis for the evolution of long post-reproductive lifespans in the human lineage involves asymmetries in relatedness between young immigrant females and the older females in their new groups. In these circumstances, inter-generational reproductive conflicts between younger and older females are predicted to resolve in favor of the younger females, who realize fewer inclusive fitness benefits from ceding reproduction to others. This conceptual model anticipates that immigrants to a community initially have few kin ties to others in the group, gradually showing greater relatedness to group members as they have descendants who remain with them in the group. We examine …
Nonlinear Price Dynamics Of S&P 100 Stocks, Gunduz Caginalp, Mark Desantis
Nonlinear Price Dynamics Of S&P 100 Stocks, Gunduz Caginalp, Mark Desantis
ESI Publications
The methodology presented provides a quantitative way to characterize investor behavior and price dynamics within a particular asset class and time period. The methodology is applied to a data set consisting of over 250,000 data points of the S&P 100 stocks during 2004-2018. Using a two-way fixed-effects model, we uncover trader motivations including evidence of both under- and overreaction within a unified setting. A nonlinear relationship is found between return and trend suggesting a small, positive trend increases the return, while a larger one tends to decrease it. The shape parameters of the nonlinearity quantify trader motivation to buy into …
Cournot Marked The Turn From Classical To Neoclassical Thinking, Vernon L. Smith, Sabiou M. Inoua
Cournot Marked The Turn From Classical To Neoclassical Thinking, Vernon L. Smith, Sabiou M. Inoua
ESI Working Papers
For classical economists, markets served the highest value buyers without anyone in the market needing to know that it was possible to write aggregate buyer reservation prices in the form, D = F (p). Cournot, thereby launched neoclassical economics as modelling and thinking of economic action in terms of their outcome effects, rather than their roots in human experience.
The Effect Of Social Information In The Dictator Game With A Taking Option, Tanya O'Garra, Valerio Capraro, Praveen Kujal
The Effect Of Social Information In The Dictator Game With A Taking Option, Tanya O'Garra, Valerio Capraro, Praveen Kujal
ESI Working Papers
We experimentally study how redistribution choices are affected by positive and negative information regarding the behaviour of a previous participant in a dictator game with a taking option. We use the strategy method to identify behavioural ‘types’, and thus distinguish ‘conformists’ from ‘counter-conformists’, and unconditional choosers. Unconditional choosers make up the greatest proportion of types (about 80%) while only about 20% of subjects condition their responses to social information. We find that both conformity and counter-conformity are driven by a desire to be seen as moral (the ‘symbolization’ dimension of moral identity). The main difference is that, conformity is also …
Classical Economics: Lost And Found, Sabiou M. Inoua, Vernon Smith
Classical Economics: Lost And Found, Sabiou M. Inoua, Vernon Smith
ESI Working Papers
"We argue that neoclassical value theory suffers from a more basic and serious logical indeterminacy, which is inherent in the axiom of price-taking behavior, and which renders price dynamics indeterminate before inquiring as to its stability. If everyone in the economy takes price as given, whence come these prices? Who is giving these prices? Jevons avoided the indeterminacy by assuming that people must have complete information on supply and demand, and the consequent equilibrium prices—‘perfect competition.’ Walras in effect imported an external agent who found the prices by trial-and-error-correction (the Walrasian Auctioneer). Paradoxically, both approaches had the potential better to …
Commentary: Reflections On Decision Research And Its Empiricism: Four Comments Inspired By Harrison, Nathaniel T. Wilcox
Commentary: Reflections On Decision Research And Its Empiricism: Four Comments Inspired By Harrison, Nathaniel T. Wilcox
ESI Publications
"Generally I find Harrison's chapter cogent, interesting, and well-informed in details and particulars, and so do not speak of them. Instead, I reflect on four larger matters Harrison brings to my mind. These four matters are presented below as four separate sections, to be read as four separate and short comments (though the four sections do share a few threads)."
Monetary Equilibrium And The Cost Of Banking Activity, Paola Boel, Gabriele Camera
Monetary Equilibrium And The Cost Of Banking Activity, Paola Boel, Gabriele Camera
ESI Working Papers
We investigate the effects of banks’ operating costs on allocations and welfare in a low interest rate environment. We introduce an explicit production function for banks in a microfounded model where banks employ labor resources, hired on a competitive market, to run their operations. In equilibrium, this generates a spread between interest rates on loans and deposits, which naturally reflects the underlying monetary policy and the efficiency of financial intermediation. In a deflation or low inflation environment, equilibrium deposits yield zero returns. Hence, banks end up soaking up labor resources to offer deposits that do not outperform idle balances, thus …