nep-exp New Economics Papers
on Experimental Economics
Issue of 2022‒12‒19
27 papers chosen by



  1. It’s a Sure Win! Experimental evidence on overconfidence in betting behavior By Martin Chegere; Paolo Falco; Marco Nieddiu; Lorenzo Pandolfi; Mattea Stein
  2. An experimental analysis of patient dumping under different payment systems By Castro, M.F.;; Lisi, D.;; Romeo, D.;
  3. The Broken Chain: Evidence against Emotionally Driven Upstream Indirect Reciprocity By Schnedler, Wendelin
  4. Job Changing Frequency and Experimental Decisions: A Field Study of Migrant Workers in the Manufacturing Industry By Li, Lingfang (Ivy); Wu, Yuting; Zhu, Xun; Chu, Rongwei; Hung, Iris
  5. My Browser is not a Billboard: Experimental Evidence on Ad-blocking Adoption and Users' Acquisition of Information By Fourberg, Niklas; Tas, Serpil; Wiewiorra, Lukas
  6. Information provision over the phone saves lives: An RCT to contain COVID-19 in rural Bangladesh at the pandemic's onset By Chowdbury, Shyamal; Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah; Schneider, Sebastian O.; Sutter, Matthias
  7. An Ellsberg paradox for ambiguity aversion By Christoph Kuzmics; Brian W. Rogers; Xiannong Zhang
  8. Information provision over the phone saves lives: An RCT to contain COVID-19 in rural Bangladesh at the pandemic’s onset By Shyamal Chowdhury; Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch; Sebastian O. Schneider; Matthias Sutter
  9. The Good of Rules: An experimental study on prosocial behavior By Caserta, Maurizio; Distefano, Rosaria; Ferrante, Livio
  10. Overcoming Behavioral Impediments to Maternal Care: Experimental Evidence on Domain Knowledge and Nudgeability from Recalcitrant Pakistan By Musharraf R. Cyan; Resul Cesur; Yasin Civelek; Bauyrzhan Yedgenov; Richard Rothenberg
  11. On Social Norms and Observability in (Dis)honest Behavior By Huber, Christoph; Litsios, Christos; Nieper, Annika S.; Promann, Timo
  12. Can Information and Advising Affect Postsecondary Participation and Attainment for Non-Traditional Students? Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment with the U.S. Army By Andrew C. Barr; Kelli A. Bird; Benjamin L. Castleman; William L. Skimmyhorn
  13. Peer-to-peer solar and social rewards: evidence from a field experiment By Carattini, Stefano; Gillingham, Kenneth T.; Meng, Xiangyu; Yoeli, Erez
  14. Peer-to-peer solar and social rewards: evidence from a field experiment By Carattini, Stefano; Gillingham, Kenneth T.; Meng, Xiangyu; Yoeli, Erez
  15. Coordination and Sophistication By Larbi Alaoui; Katharina A. Janezic; Antonio Penta
  16. Coordination and sophistication By Larbi Alaoui; Katharina A. Janezic; Antonio Penta
  17. Does the framing affect the WTP for consumption goods in realistic shopping settings? By Magdalena Brzozowicz
  18. The Effect of Ambiguity in Strategic Environments: an Experiment By Pablo Brañas-Garza; Antonio Cabrales; Maria Paz Espinosa; Diego Jorrat
  19. Keep calm and carry on: The short- vs. long-run effects of mindfulness meditation on (academic) performance By Cassar, Lea; Fischer, Mira; Valero, Vanessa
  20. Lowering Barriers to Remote Education: Experimental Impacts on Parental Responses and Learning By Emily Beam; Priya Mukherjee; Laia Navarro-Sola
  21. Large-scale agricultural investments, employment opportunities and communal conflict By De Juan, Alexander; Hoffmann, Lisa; Lay, Jann
  22. Taking A Closer Look At The Bayesian Truth Serum: A Registered Report (Stage 2 Registered Report) By Schönegger, Philipp; Verheyen, Steven
  23. Land Assembly without Eminent Domain: Laboratory Experiments of Two Tax Mechanisms By Winn, Abel; McCarter, Matthew; DeSantis, Mark
  24. E-Payment Technology and Business Finance : A Randomized Controlled Trial with Mobile Money (revision of CentER DP 2019-032) By Dalton, Patricio; Pamuk, H.; Ramrattan, R.; van Soest, Daan; Uras, Burak
  25. Replication of "Re-Assessing Elite-Public Gaps in Political Behavior" by Joshua Kertzer By Guntermann, Eric; Lenz, Gabriel S.
  26. The debt aversion survey module: An experimentally validated tool to measure individual debt aversion By David Albrecht; Thomas Meissner
  27. Eye movements, pupil dilation, and conflict detection in reasoning: Exploring the evidence for intuitive logic By Purcell, Zoe; J. Roberts, Andrew; J. Handley, Simon; Howarth, Stephanie

  1. By: Martin Chegere (University of Dar es Salaam); Paolo Falco (University of Copenhagen); Marco Nieddiu (University of Cagliari); Lorenzo Pandolfi (Università di Napoli Federico II and CSEF); Mattea Stein (Università di Napoli Federico II and CSEF)
    Abstract: We conduct an experiment with regular sports bettors in Tanzania to investigate how they value their bets and form expectations about winning probabilities. By comparing a sports bet to a neutral urn-and-balls lottery with identical odds, we find that subjects under the sports framing assign higher subjective values (certainty equivalents) to their bets and are significantly more optimistic about their chances of winning, even though, in fact, they are not more likely to win. This is consistent with bettors being overconfident in their ability to predict sports outcomes. Coupled with data on betting frequency and motives, our results suggest that, by leveraging gamblers’ overconfidence, sports betting magnifies their financial losses.
    Keywords: betting, overconfidence, expectations, framing, sports.
    JEL: C91 D84 D91 L83
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sef:csefwp:655&r=exp
  2. By: Castro, M.F.;; Lisi, D.;; Romeo, D.;
    Abstract: Physicians behave differently depending on the payment systems, giving rise to several problems such as patient dumping in which patients are refused because of economic or liability reasons. This paper tests whether and to which extent the adoption of either fee-for-service or Salary system induces physicians to practice patient dumping. Through the combination of an artefactual field experiment and a laboratory experiment, we test whether the risk of being sued for having practiced dumping can affect physicians’ behavior. Dumping is more often observed under Salary than under FFS. The introduction of dumping liability only mildly reduced dumping practice, though the provision of services increased. Our findings call for healthcare policy makers looking at the interplay between remuneration schemes and liability risks, and accounting for the trade-off between the reduction of the risk of being sued for patient dumping and the increase of the costs of the provision of medical services.
    Keywords: framed field experiments; patient dumping; medical liability; physicians’ decision making;
    JEL: C72 C93 D83 I12
    Date: 2022–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:22/29&r=exp
  3. By: Schnedler, Wendelin (University of Paderborn)
    Abstract: Psychologists claim that being treated kindly puts individuals in a positive emotional state: they then treat an unrelated third party more kindly. Numerous experiments document that subjects indeed 'pay forward' specific behavior. For example, they are less generous after having experienced stinginess. This, however, is not necessarily driven by emotions. Subjects may also imitate what they regard as socially adequate behavior. Here, I present an experiment in which imitation is not possible at the next opportunity to act with a stranger: after being given either a fun or an annoying job, subjects have to decide whether to be generous or not. I find that although subjects who are given the annoying job report more negative emotions than those with the fun job, they do not treat an unrelated third person more unkindly in terms of passing on less money.
    Keywords: indirect upstream reciprocity, paying-it-forward, chain of unkindness, simple anger, emotional regulation, imitation
    JEL: D91 C91 D03
    Date: 2022–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15732&r=exp
  4. By: Li, Lingfang (Ivy); Wu, Yuting; Zhu, Xun; Chu, Rongwei; Hung, Iris
    Abstract: Migrant workers form a very important part of the labor force in the economic development of many countries. Their turnover decisions may affect the stability of the performance of manufacturing industries. It is important to understand what kind of individual behavioral preferences may affect their job changing frequency. This study conducts a lab-in-the-field experiment through a large online-to-offline job-matching platform to elicit manufacturing migrant workers’ preferences, such as uncertainty attitudes, intertemporal choices and social preferences, especially difference aversion. The study also surveyed their demographic characteristics and other factors related to their job choices. We find that subjects who are more risk seeking change jobs more frequently. We also use the job record data from the platform and conduct empirical analysis to investigate one explanation of this result: risk-seeking subjects possess more optimistic expectations of potential job opportunities and they are more likely to sample different jobs and thus generate higher job changing frequency. Our findings may help policy-makers and employers design policies or mechanisms to prevent exorbitant job-changing behavior.
    Keywords: migrant worker, preference, job turnover, job search, experiment
    JEL: C91 J01
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:115472&r=exp
  5. By: Fourberg, Niklas; Tas, Serpil; Wiewiorra, Lukas
    Abstract: Ad-avoidance technologies such as ad-blocking devices in browsers have become mainstream tools in recent years and escaped their role as niche applications that are only for the technically savvy. While technical impacts of those tools are well researched, their effects on actual consumer behavior is not. In an experimental setting this study provides first evidence on the effect of ad-blocking on users' ability to acquire information in the form of an online reading task. We find that ad-blocking leads to more effort being exerted and increases social welfare by reducing inefficient searching. Additionally, ad-blocking induces users' visit duration on websites to be more elastic in the experienced intensity of advertisements, making the competitive environment among publishers more intense.
    Keywords: Ad-blocking,consumer behavior,lab experiment,online advertising,welfare,privacy
    JEL: L82 L86 M37 C91
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:itse22:265628&r=exp
  6. By: Chowdbury, Shyamal; Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah; Schneider, Sebastian O.; Sutter, Matthias
    Abstract: Lack of information about COVID-19 and its spread may have contributed to excess mortality at the pandemic's onset, In April and May 2020, we implemented a randomized controlled trial with more than 3,000 households in 150 Bangladeshi villages, Our one-to-one information campaign via phone stressed the importance of social distancing and hygiene measures, and illustrated the consequences of an exponential spread of COVID-19, We find that information provision improves knowledge about COVID-19 and induces significant behavioral changes. Information provision also yields considerably better health outcomes, most importantly by reducing the number of reported deaths by about 50% in treated villages.
    Keywords: Field experiment,COVID-19,Information intervention,Death rates
    JEL: C93 D01 D91 I12
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:dicedp:393&r=exp
  7. By: Christoph Kuzmics (University of Graz, Austria); Brian W. Rogers (Washington University in St. Louis, U.S.A.); Xiannong Zhang (Washington University in St. Louis, U.S.A.)
    Abstract: The 1961 Ellsberg paradox is typically seen as an empirical challenge to the subjective expected utility framework. Experiments based on Ellsberg's design have spawned a variety of new approaches, culminating in a new paradigm represented by, now classical, models of ambiguity aversion. We design and implement a decision-theoretic lab experiment that is extremely close to the original Ellsberg design and in which, empirically, subjects make choices very similar to those in the Ellsberg experiments. In our environment, however, these choices cannot be rationalized by any of the classical models of ambiguity aversion.
    Keywords: Knightian uncertainty; subjective expected utility; ambiguity aversion; lab experiment.
    JEL: C91 D81
    Date: 2022–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpaper:2022-05&r=exp
  8. By: Shyamal Chowdhury (University of Sydney); Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch (IZA, Bonn, University of Düsseldorf, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn); Sebastian O. Schneider (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn); Matthias Sutter (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, University of Cologne, University of Innsbruck, IZA, and CESifo)
    Abstract: Lack of information about COVID-19 and its spread may have contributed to excess mortality at the pandemic’s onset. In April and May 2020, we implemented a randomized controlled trial with more than 3,000 households in 150 Bangladeshi villages. Our one-to-one information campaign via phone stressed the importance of social distancing and hygiene measures, and illustrated the consequences of an exponential spread of COVID-19. We find that information provision improves knowledge about COVID-19 and induces significant behavioral changes. Information provision also yields considerably better health outcomes, most importantly by reducing the number of reported deaths by about 50% in treated villages.
    Keywords: Field experiment, COVID-19, Information intervention, Death rates
    JEL: C93 D01 D91 I12
    Date: 2022–11–29
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2022_09&r=exp
  9. By: Caserta, Maurizio; Distefano, Rosaria; Ferrante, Livio
    Abstract: In everyday life, individuals interact with relatives, friends and colleagues, share ideas and passions and cooperate with others to pursue common goals. Within each social domain, individuals recognize themselves as a group member with rights and duties to observe. Understanding the importance of social norms and encouraging mutually beneficial cooperation is crucial for societal and economic development. This paper presents an experimental study of an educational program for early adolescents of 11 years old from South Italy. The program introduces participants to institutions, civic engagement, sense of duty, and decision-making. Among other didactic activities, it includes guided tours and a role-taking game. Our results suggest that the program attendance positively affects cooperation in a one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma and altruistic behavior in a Dictator Game. Our findings contribute to the nature-nurture debate, showing that promoting prosocial behavior can be effective in pursing the common good.
    Keywords: Experimental game theory,Group Decision Making,Cooperation,Prisoner’s Dilemma,Dictator Game
    JEL: C72 C93 I20
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:266393&r=exp
  10. By: Musharraf R. Cyan; Resul Cesur; Yasin Civelek; Bauyrzhan Yedgenov; Richard Rothenberg
    Abstract: We conducted a large-scale field experiment to calibrate phone messaging to its potential of overcoming behavioral barriers to maternal care uptake in the countryside of a developing country, where a significant share of women forgoes life-saving maternity-related care even when within reach. The high-arching goal of our intervention is to test if and to what extent filling out insufficient domain knowledge (i.e., childbearing-related health literacy) generates responsiveness to nudges for adopting maternal care among the rural poor of Pakistan. We find that informational nudges sent in a random order using the appropriate medium of communication, voice messages, during pregnancy significantly improve care-seeking behaviors, measured by antenatal care, postpartum checkup, and postnatal visits, through improved literacy. Importantly, we document that high-frequency voice calls timed to gestational age substantially increase the efficacy of informational nudges, including boosting facility deliveries, once domain knowledge is built and nudgeability established. Nevertheless, small financial incentives trump the productivity of informational voice calls in both improving health literacy and boosting care uptake, likely due to participants equating the intrinsic value of the intended behavioral change to the size of the monetary reward. These results are scalable to a large number of populations across developing nations.
    JEL: C93 D10 I12 I15
    Date: 2022–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30680&r=exp
  11. By: Huber, Christoph (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business); Litsios, Christos; Nieper, Annika S. (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Promann, Timo
    Abstract: Transparency and observability have been shown to foster ethical decision-making as people tend to comply with an underlying norm for honesty. In a die-rolling experiment, we investigate whether observability can have detrimental effects, however, in situations implying a social norm for dishonesty. We thus introduce a norm nudge towards honesty or dishonesty and make participants' decisions observable and open to other participants' judgment in order to manipulate the observability of people's decisions as well as the underlying social norm. We find that a nudge towards honesty indeed increases the level of honesty, suggesting that such a norm nudge can successfully induce behavioral change. Our introduction of social image concerns via observability, however, does not affect honesty and does not interact with our norm nudge.
    Date: 2022–06–17
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:2nxv8&r=exp
  12. By: Andrew C. Barr; Kelli A. Bird; Benjamin L. Castleman; William L. Skimmyhorn
    Abstract: Lack of information and advising prior to college matriculation may contribute to poor post-secondary outcomes among non-traditional students. We conducted a large-scale, multi-arm field experiment with the U.S. Army to investigate whether a package of research-based personalized information and access to advising affects postsecondary choices and attainment among a large non-traditional adult population. We find no impact of the intervention on whether veterans enroll in college, on the quality of their college enrollment, or on their persistence in college. Our results suggest that influencing non-traditional populations’ educational decisions and outcomes will require substantially more intensive programs.
    JEL: H5 I23 J24
    Date: 2022–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30665&r=exp
  13. By: Carattini, Stefano; Gillingham, Kenneth T.; Meng, Xiangyu; Yoeli, Erez
    Abstract: Observability and social rewards have been demonstrated to influence the adoption of pro-social behavior in a variety of contexts. This study implements a field experiment to examine the influence of observability and social rewards in the context of a novel pro-social behavior: peer-to-peer solar. Peer-to-peer solar offers an opportunity to households who cannot have solar on their homes to access solar energy from their neighbors. However, unlike solar installations, peer-to-peer solar is an invisible form of pro-environmental behavior. We implemented a set of randomized campaigns using Facebook ads in the Massachusetts cities of Cambridge and Somerville, in partnership with a peer-to-peer company, which agreed to offer to a subsample of customers the possibility to share “green reports” online, providing shareable information about their greenness. We find that interest in peer-to-peer solar increases by up to 30% when “green reports,” which would make otherwise invisible behavior visible, are mentioned in the ads
    Keywords: Peer to peer solar; pro-environmental behavior; social rewards; visibility; Facebook
    JEL: C93 D91 Q20
    Date: 2022–11–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:117361&r=exp
  14. By: Carattini, Stefano; Gillingham, Kenneth T.; Meng, Xiangyu; Yoeli, Erez
    Abstract: Observability and social rewards have been demonstrated to influence the adoption of pro-social behavior in a variety of contexts. This study implements a field experiment to examine the influence of observability and social rewards in the context of a novel pro-social behavior: peer-to-peer solar. Peer-to-peer solar offers an opportunity to households who cannot have solar on their homes to access solar energy from their neighbors. However, unlike solar installations, peer-to-peer solar is an invisible form of pro-environmental behavior. We implemented a set of randomized campaigns using Facebook ads in the Massachusetts cities of Cambridge and Somerville, in partnership with a peer-to-peer company, which agreed to offer to a subsample of customers the possibility to share “green reports” online, providing shareable information about their greenness. We find that interest in peer-to-peer solar increases by up to 30% when “green reports,” which would make otherwise invisible behavior visible, are mentioned in the ads
    Keywords: Peer to peer solar; pro-environmental behavior; social rewards; visibility; Facebook
    JEL: C93 D91 Q20
    Date: 2022–11–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:117362&r=exp
  15. By: Larbi Alaoui; Katharina A. Janezic; Antonio Penta
    Abstract: How coordination can be achieved in isolated, one-shot interactions without communication and in the absence of focal points is a long-standing question in game theory. We show that a cost-benefit approach to reasoning in strategic settings delivers sharp theoretical predictions that address this central question. In particular, our model predicts that, for a large class of individual reasoning processes, coordination in some canonical games is more likely to arise when players perceive heterogeneity in their cognitive abilities, rather than homogeneity. In addition, and perhaps contrary to common perception, it is not necessarily the case that being of higher cognitive sophistication is beneficial to the agent: in some coordination games, the opposite is true. We show that subjects’ behavior in a laboratory experiment is consistent with the predictions of this model, and reject alternative coordination mechanisms. Overall, the empirical results strongly support our model.
    Keywords: Coordination, cognitive cost, sophistication, strategic reasoning, value of reasoning
    JEL: C72 C91 C92 D80
    Date: 2022–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1372&r=exp
  16. By: Larbi Alaoui; Katharina A. Janezic; Antonio Penta
    Abstract: How coordination can be achieved in isolated, one-shot interactions without communication and in the absence of focal points is a long-standing question in game theory. We show that a cost-benefit approach to reasoning in strategic settings delivers sharp theoretical predictions that address this central question. In particular, our model predicts that, for a large class of individual reasoning processes, coordination in some canonical games is more likely to arise when players perceive heterogeneity in their cognitive abilities, rather than homogeneity. In addition, and perhaps contrary to common perception, it is not necessarily the case that being of higher cognitive sophistication is beneficial to the agent: in some coordination games, the opposite is true. We show that subjects' behavior in a laboratory experiment is consistent with the predictions of this model, and reject alternative coordination mechanisms. Overall, the empirical results strongly support our model.
    Keywords: Coordination, cognitive cost, sophistication, strategic reasoning, value of reasoning
    JEL: C72 C91 C92 D80
    Date: 2022–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1849&r=exp
  17. By: Magdalena Brzozowicz (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw)
    Abstract: In this study, I examined the influence of the framing effect on the valuation of consumption goods in realistic shopping settings. In four field experiments comprising 1602 shopping center customers as participants, I elicited willingness to pay (WTP) for consumer products by manipulating framing conditions (positive vs. negative framing). Although my four experiments involved two different types of products (durable vs. fast-moving), two different types of framing (attribute vs. goal) and two different valuation procedures (hypothetical vs. consequential), their results were remarkably consistent. I observed that the framing effect had no impact on WTP for the presented products. In the light of both this study and the existing literature, I suspect that the framing effect is more likely to appear in solely hypothetical judgement and assessment tasks than in the context of eliciting consumer WTP
    Keywords: framing effect, field experiment, willingness to pay, WTP
    JEL: D91 C93 M31
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2021-20&r=exp
  18. By: Pablo Brañas-Garza (Loyola Behavioral Lab); Antonio Cabrales (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid); Maria Paz Espinosa (University of the Basque Country); Diego Jorrat (Loyola Behavioral Lab)
    Abstract: We experimentally study a game in which success requires a sufficient total contribution by members of a group. There are significant uncertainties surrounding the chance and the total effort required for success. A theoretical model with max-min preferences towards ambiguity predicts higher contributions under ambiguity than under risk. However, in a large representative sample of the Spanish population (1,500 participants) we find that the ATE of ambiguity on contributions is zero. The main significant interaction with the personal characteristics of the participants is with risk attitudes, and it increases contributions. This suggests that policymakers concernedwith ambiguous problems (like climate change) do not need to worry excessively about ambiguity.
    Date: 2022–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aoz:wpaper:196&r=exp
  19. By: Cassar, Lea; Fischer, Mira; Valero, Vanessa
    Abstract: Mindfulness-based meditation practices are becoming increasingly popular in Western societies, including in the business world and in education. While the scientific literature has largely documented the benefits of mindfulness meditation for mental health, little is still known about potential spillovers of these practices on other important life outcomes, such as performance. We address this question through a field experiment in an educational setting. We study the causal impact of mindfulness meditation on academic performance through a randomized evaluation of a well-known 8-week mindfulness meditation training delivered to university students on campus. As expected, the intervention improves students' mental health and non-cognitive skills. However, it takes time before students' performance can benefit from mindfulness meditation: we find that, if anything, the intervention marginally decreases average grades in the short run, i.e., during the exam period right after the end of the intervention, whereas it significantly increases academic performance, by about 0.4 standard deviations, in the long run (ca. 6 months after the end of intervention). We investigate the underlying mechanisms and discuss the implications of our results.
    Keywords: performance,mental health,education,meditation,field experiment
    JEL: I21 C93 I12 I31
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2022203&r=exp
  20. By: Emily Beam (University of Vermont); Priya Mukherjee (University of Wisconsin--Madison); Laia Navarro-Sola (Northwestern University)
    Abstract: We conduct a randomized controlled trial with households of secondary school students in Bangladesh to investigate how parents adjust their investments in response to three educational interventions: an informational campaign about an educational phone application, an internet data subsidy, and one-on-one phone learning support. We find that offering an educational service in a context where other barriers to take-up exist can still trigger parental educational investments by acting as a signal or nudge. These behavioral changes result in lasting learning gains concentrated among richer households, reflecting that the relevant behavior change--increased tutoring investment--is easier for them to implement. In contrast, when interventions do increase take-up, they have the potential to narrow the socioeconomic achievement gap. We observe that increased usage of the targeted educational service limits parental behavioral responses. This implies that learning gains in these cases are directly caused by the potential effectiveness of the services adopted. In our setting, remote one-to-one teacher support improves learning among students from poorer households, whereas receiving the free data package jointly with the app information has no impact on learning.
    Keywords: human capital, parental investments, educational technology, educational inequality
    JEL: C93 I21 I24 J13 O15
    Date: 2022–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2022-030&r=exp
  21. By: De Juan, Alexander; Hoffmann, Lisa; Lay, Jann
    Abstract: We investigate whether and how large-scale agricultural investments (LSAIs) influence the risk of communal conflict. We assess a mechanism that links LSAIs to conflict through interethnic competition over access to plantation employment. Our analyses focus on rural Liberia. We measure communal conflict with joy-of-destruction experiments (JDG). We first investigate associations between access to employment and JDG outcomes---comparing villages that are located below/above a distance threshold at which travel costs to plantations equal daily wages of plantation workers. We find substantively higher levels of destruction in communities with better access to LSAI employment. We then analyze whether participants display more destructive behaviour when members of ethnic minorities interact with members of dominant groups. Contrary to expectations, we find no variation across interethnic experimental constellations. Exploratory descriptive analyses tentatively suggest a link between LSAIs, labor migration and communal conflict.
    Date: 2022–06–24
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:j5vmh&r=exp
  22. By: Schönegger, Philipp (University of St Andrews); Verheyen, Steven (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
    Abstract: Over the past decade, psychology and its cognate disciplines have undergone substantial scientific reform, ranging from advances in statistical methodology to significant changes in academic norms. One aspect of experimental design that has received comparatively little attention is incentivisation, i.e. the way that participants are rewarded and incentivised monetarily for their participation in experiments and surveys. While incentive-compatible designs are the norm in disciplines like economics, the majority of studies in psychology and experimental philosophy are constructed such that individuals’ incentives to maximise their payoffs in many cases stand opposed to their incentives to state their true preferences honestly. This is in part because the subject matter is often self-report data about subjective topics and the sample is drawn from online platforms like Prolific or MTurk where many participants are out to make a quick buck. One mechanism that allows for the introduction of an incentive-compatible design in such circumstances is the Bayesian Truth Serum (BTS; Prelec, 2004), which rewards participants based on how surprisingly common their answers are. Recently, Schoenegger (2021) applied this mechanism in the context of Likert-scale self-reports, finding that the introduction of this mechanism significantly altered response behaviour. In this registered report, we further investigate this mechanism by (i) attempting to directly replicate the previous result and (ii) analysing if the Bayesian Truth Serum’s effect is distinct from the effects of its constituent parts (increase in expected earnings and addition of prediction tasks). We fail to replicate the effect of the BTS on response behaviour and are as such unable to recommend wide adoption of the BTS on the basis of these data. Further, we provide weak evidence that the prediction task itself influences response distributions and that this task’s effect is distinct from an increase in expected earnings, suggesting that the BTS’s effects may ameliorate distinct effects of its constituent parts.
    Date: 2022–06–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:9zvqj&r=exp
  23. By: Winn, Abel; McCarter, Matthew; DeSantis, Mark (Mercury Publication)
    Abstract: Proposal Can be found in other artifacts tab.
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajw:wpaper:07001&r=exp
  24. By: Dalton, Patricio (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research); Pamuk, H. (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research); Ramrattan, R.; van Soest, Daan (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research); Uras, Burak (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research)
    Keywords: SME Finance; financial integration; Mobile-Money; E-Payments
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiucen:ab4a8785-7101-48c4-b685-cb160536d2e5&r=exp
  25. By: Guntermann, Eric; Lenz, Gabriel S.
    Abstract: Kertzer (2022) conducts a meta-analysis of parallel experiments on samples of political elites and ordinary citizens. He examines whether the average treatment effect for elites is significantly different from the average treatment effect for citizens, finding that only 19 of 162 (11.7%) difference-in-difference estimates are statistically significant after adjusting for the false discovery rate. He also finds that elites and masses hold similar foreign policy attitudes after controlling for their demographic characteristics. In this replication report, we begin by running robustness and heterogeneity tests for the first claim. We find that the results survive many robustness tests. We also find, however, that only a small number of the these treatments significantly affected masses (N=28) or elites (N=30). This low rate suggests the possibility that almost all of these experiments failed to successfully manipulate either masses or elites. If so, we may not be able to conclude that masses and elites respond similarly to experiments with confidence until political scientists produce more experiments with actual treatment effects or with successful manipulation checks in cases of null effects. In the second part of this replication report, we conceptually replicate the second Kertzer analysis, finding a strong correlation between elite and mass political decisions and attitudes, thus confirming Kertzer's analysis.
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:10&r=exp
  26. By: David Albrecht; Thomas Meissner
    Abstract: We develop an experimentally validated, short and easy-to-use survey module for measuring individual debt aversion. To this end, we first estimate debt aversion on an individual level, using choice data from Meissner and Albrecht (2022). This data also contains responses to a large set of debt aversion survey items, consisting of existing items from the literature and novel items developed for this study. Out of these, we identify a survey module comprising two qualitative survey items to best predict debt aversion in the incentivized experiment.
    Date: 2022–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2211.02742&r=exp
  27. By: Purcell, Zoe; J. Roberts, Andrew; J. Handley, Simon; Howarth, Stephanie
    Abstract: A controversial claim in recent dual process accounts of reasoning is that intuitive processes not only lead to bias, but are also sensitive to the logical status of an argument. The intuitive logic hypothesis draws upon evidence that reasoners take longer and are less confident on belief-logic conflict problems, irrespective of whether they give the correct logical response. In this paper we examine conflict detection under conditions in which participants are asked to either judge the logical validity or believability of a presented conclusion, accompanied by measures of eye movement and pupil dilation. The findings show an effect of conflict, under both types of instruction, on accuracy, latency, gaze shifts and pupil dilation. Importantly these effects extend to conflict trials in which participants give a belief-based response (incorrectly under logic instructions, or correctly under belief instructions) demonstrating both behavioural and physiological evidence in support of the logical intuition hypothesis.
    Keywords: Reasoning; Confidence; Dual Process Theory; Logical Intuitions; Eye tracking
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:iastwp:127553&r=exp

General information on the NEP project can be found at https://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.