Search Papers

Uri Gneezy, Kenneth Leonard, John A List

Cited by*: 243 Downloads*: 41

This study uses a controlled experiment to explore whether there are gender differences in selecting into competitive environments across two distinct societies: the Maasai in Tanzania and the Khasi in India. One unique aspect of these societies is that the Maasai represent a textbook example of a patriarchal society whereas the Khasi are matrilineal. Similar to the extant evidence drawn from experiments executed in Western cultures, Maasai men opt to compete at roughly twice the rate as Maasai women. Interestingly, this result is reversed amongst the Khasi, where women choose the competitive environment more often than Khasi men, and even choose to compete weakly more often than Maasai men. We view these results as potentially providing insights into the underpinnings of the factors hypothesized to be determinants of the observed gender differences in selecting into competitive environments.

John A List, Sally Sadoff, Mathis Wagner

Cited by*: 2 Downloads*: 33

Experimental economics represents a strong growth industry. In the past several decades the method has expanded beyond intellectual curiosity, now meriting consideration alongside the other more traditional empirical approaches used in economics. Accompanying this growth is an influx of new experimenters who are in need of straightforward direction to make their designs more powerful. This study provides several simple rules of thumb that researchers can apply to improve the efficiency of their experimental designs. We buttress these points by including empirical examples from the literature.

Jonathan E Alevy, Michael S Haigh, John A List

Cited by*: 21 Downloads*: 24

Previous empirical studies of information cascades use either naturally occurring data or laboratory experiments with student subjects. We combine attractive elements from each of these lines of research by observing market professionals from the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) in a controlled environment. As a baseline, we compare their behavior to student choices in similar treatments. We further examine whether, and to what extent, cascade formation is influenced by both private signal strength and the quality of previous public signals, as well as decision heuristics that differ from Bayesian rationality. Analysis of over 1,500 individual decisions suggests that CBOT professionals are better able to discern the quality of public signals than their student counterparts. This leads to much different cascade formation. Further, while the behavior of students is consistent with the notion that losses loom larger than gains, market professionals are unaffected by the domain of earnings. These results are important in both a positive and normative sense.

Stefano DellaVigna, John A List, Ulrike Malmendier

Cited by*: 257 Downloads*: 65

Every year, 90 percent of Americans give money to charities. Is such generosity necessarily welfare enhancing for the giver? We present a theoretical framework that distinguishes two types of motivation: individuals like to give, e.g., due to altruism or warm glow, and individuals would rather not give but dislike saying no, e.g., due to social pressure. We design a door-to-door fund-raising drive in which some households are informed about the exact time of solicitation with a flyer on their door-knobs; thus, they can seek or avoid the fund-raiser. We find that the flyer reduces the share of households opening the door by 10 to 25 percent and, if the flyer allows checking a `Do Not Disturb' box, reduces giving by 30 percent. The latter decrease is concentrated among donations smaller than $10. These findings suggest that social pressure is an important determinant of door-to-door giving. Combining data from this and a complementary field experiment, we structurally estimate the model. The estimated social pressure cost of saying no to a solicitor is $3.5 for an in-state charity and $1.4 for an out-of-state charity. Our welfare calculations suggest that our door-to-door fund-raising campaigns on average lower utility of the potential donors.

Steffen Andersen, Alec Brandon, Uri Gneezy, John A List

Cited by*: 6 Downloads*: 51

Perhaps the most powerful form of framing arises through reference dependence, wherein choices are made recognizing the starting point or a goal. In labor economics, for example, a form of reference dependence, income targeting, has been argued to represent a serious challenge to traditional economic models. We design a field experiment linked tightly to three popular economic models of labor supply-two behavioral variants and one simple neoclassical model--to deepen our understanding of the positive implications of our major theories. Consistent with neoclassical theory and reference--dependent preferences with endogenous reference points, workers (vendors in open air markets) supply more hours when presented with an expected transitory increase in hourly wages. In contrast with the prediction of behavioral models, however, when vendors earn an unexpected windfall early in the day, their labor supply does not respond. A key feature of our market in terms of parsing the theories is that vendors do not post prices rather they haggle with customers. In this way, our data also speak to the possibility of reference-dependent preferences over other dimensions. Our investigation again yields results that are in line with neoclassical theory, as bargaining patterns are unaffected by the unexpected windfall.

John A List, Anya Samek, Terri Zhu

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 67

We use a field experiment to investigate the effect of incentives on food purchase decisions at a grocery store. We recruit over 200 participants and track their purchases for a period of 6 months, permitting us a glimpse of more than 3,500 individual shopping trips. We randomize participants to one of several treatments, in which we incentivize fresh fruit and vegetable purchases, provide tips for fruit and vegetable preparation, or both. We report several key insights. First, our informational content treatment has little effect. Second, we find an important price effect: modest pecuniary incentives more than double the proportion of dollars spent on produce in the grocery store. Third, we find an interesting pattern of consumption after the experiment ends: even when incentives are removed, the treatment group has higher fruit and vegetable purchases compared to the control group. These long-term results are in stark contrast to either a standard price model or a behavioral model of 'crowd out.' Rather, our results are consonant with a habit formation model. This opens up the distinct possibility that short term incentives can be used as a key instrument to combat obesity.

Uri Gneezy, Andreas Leibbrandt, John A List

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 9

The functioning and well-being of any society and organization critically hinges on norms of cooperation that regulate social activities. Empirical evidence on how such norms emerge and in which environments they thrive remains a clear void in the literature. To provide an initial set of insights, we overlay a set of field experiments in a natural setting. Our approach is to compare behavior in Brazilian fishermen societies that differ along one major dimension: the workplace organization. In one society (located by the sea) fishermen are forced to work in groups whereas in the adjacent society (located on a lake) fishing is inherently an individual activity. We report sharp evidence that the sea fishermen trust and cooperate more and have greater ability to coordinate group actions than their lake fishermen counterparts. These findings are consistent with the argument that people internalize social norms that emerge from specific needs and support the idea that socio-ecological factors play a decisive role in the proliferation of pro-social behaviors.

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.

Erwin Bulte, John A List, Qin Tu

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 32

A vibrant literature has emerged that explores the economic implications of the sex ratio (the ratio of men to women in the population), including changes in fertility rates, educational outcomes, labor supply, and household purchases. Previous empirical efforts, however, have paid less attention to the underlying channel via which changes in the sex ratio affect economic decisions. This study combines evidence from a field experiment and a survey to document that the sex ratio importantly influences female bargaining power: as the sex ratio increases, female bargaining power increases.

Richard Carson , Theodore Groves , John A List

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 1

Researchers, using contingent valuation (CV) to value changes in nonmarket goods, typically believe respondents always answer questions truthfully or they answer truthfully only when it is in their interest to do so. The second position, while consistent with economic theory, implies that interpreting survey responses depends critically on the incentive structure provided. We derive simple tests capable of distinguishing the two views. Our theoretical model for examining the incentive structure of a single binary choice relaxes the usual expected utility assumption. We test our theory using a field experiment involving voting to provide a public good. Experimental results are consistent theoretical predictions and cast doubt on the relevance of a large experimental literature using inconsequential questions and non-incentive-compatible mechanisms to make inferences about CV. The framework put forth should help in understanding the role played by theoretical conditions for preference elicitation and lend insight into the hypothetical bias literature.

Uri Gneezy, Moshe Hoffman, John A List

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 0

We therefore agree with the sentiments of Bailey et al. (1) and Daly (2): Our study should not be viewed as the definitive study on this topic but as a proof of concept, which should propel researchers to exploit this unique sample to its fullest advantage. Further research using noncognitive measures, as well as alternative spatial measures would prove invaluable in addressing some of the shortcomings pointed out by Bailey et al. (1) and Daly (2). Moreover, such research would reveal the generality of our results and could focus activist efforts on traits that are most amenable to nurture. Also, if the measures are chosen to be more or less gender-dimorphic and more or less influenced by motivation, stereotype threat, and training, for example, this research, in addition to addressing some of the astute criticisms of Bailey et al. (1) and Daly (2), could also reveal mechanism, which would likewise be invaluable for focusing activists' efforts. We welcome collaboration with psychologists and anthropologists, such as the experts to whom this letter replies, to help us develop such measures of spatial and nonspatial cognitive abilities that are easy to explain and quick to implement, to take full advantage of this unique sample.

John A List, Jason F Shogren, Michael Spencer , Stephen Swallow

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 5

This paper considers how six alternative rebate rules affect voluntary contributions in a threshold public-good experiment. The rules differ by (1) whether an individual can receive a proportional rebate of excess contributions, a winner-takes-all of any excess contributions, or a full rebate of one's contribution in the event the public good is provided and excess contributions exist, and (2) whether the probability of receiving a rebate is proportional to an individual's contribution relative to total contributions or is a simple uniform probability distribution set by the number of contributors. The paper adds to the existing experimental economics literature on threshold public goods by investigating both aggregate and individual demand revelation under the winner-take-all and random full-rebate rules. Half of the rules (proportional rebate, winner-take-all with uniform probability among all group members, and random full-rebate with uniform probability) provide total contributions that nearly equal total benefits, while the rest (winner-take-all with proportional probability, winner-take-all with uniform probability among contributors only, and random full-rebate with proportional probability) exceed benefits by over 30 percent. Only the proportional rebate rule is found to achieve both aggregate and individual demand revelation. Our experimental results have implications for both fundraisers and valuation practitioners.

Junsoo Lee, John A List, Mark Strazicich

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 2

In this paper we examine temporal properties of eleven natural resource real price series from 1870-1990 by employing a Lagrangian Multiplier unit root test that allows for two endogenously determined structural breaks with and without a quadratic trend. Contrary to previous research, we find evidence against the unit root hypothesis for all price series. Our findings support characterizing natural resource prices as stationary around deterministic trends with structural breaks. This result is important in both a positive and normative sense. For example, without an appropriate understanding of the dynamics of a time series, empirical verification of theories, forecasting, and proper inference are potentially fruitless. More generally, we show that both pre-testing for unit roots with breaks and allowing for breaks in the forecast model can improve forecast accuracy.

Erwin Bulte, Simon Levin , John A List, Steven Pacala

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 2

n/a

Peggy Dwyer , James Gilkeson , John A List

Cited by*: 46 Downloads*: 15

Using data from a national survey of nearly 2000 mutual fund investors, we investigate whether investor gender is related to risk taking as revealed in mutual fund investment decisions. Consonant with the received literature, we find that women exhibit less risk-taking than men in their most recent, largest, and riskiest mutual fund investment decisions. More importantly, we find that the impact of gender on risk taking is significantly weakened when investor knowledge of financial markets and investments is controlled in the regression equation. This result suggests that the greater level of risk aversion among women that is frequently documented in the literature can be substantially, but not completely, explained by knowledge disparities.

Alexander W Cappelen, John A List, Anya Samek, Bertil Tungodden

Cited by*: 2 Downloads*: 44

We present results from the first study to examine the causal impact of early childhood education on social preferences of children. We compare children who, at 3-4 years old, were randomized into either a full-time preschool, a parenting program with incentives, or to a control group. We returned to the same children when they reach 7-8 years old a conducted a series of incentivized experiments to elicit there social preferences. We find that early childhood education has a strong causal impact on social preferences several years after the intervention: attending preschool makes children more egalitarian in their fairness view and the parenting program enhances the importance children place on efficiency relative to fairness. Our findings highlight the importance of taking a broad perspective when designing and evaluating early childhood education programs, and provide evidence how differences in institutional exposure may contribute to explaining heterogeneity in social preferences in society.

Basil Halperin, Benjamin Ho, John A List, Ian Muir

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

We use a theory of apologies to analyze a nationwide field experiment involving 1.5 million Uber ridesharing consumers who experienced late rides. Several insights emerge. First, apologies are not a panacea: the efficacy of an apology and whether it may backfire depend on how the apology is made. Second, across treatments, money speaks louder than words - the best form of apology is to include a coupon for a future trip. Third, in some cases sending an apology is worse than sending nothing at all, particularly for repeated apologies. For firms, caveat venditor should be the rule when considering apologies.

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

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

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.

Kuan-Ming Chen, Min Ding, John A List, Magne Mogstad

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Recent changes in labor arrangements have increased interest in estimating and understanding the value of job flexibility. We leverage a large natural field experiment at Uber to create exogenous variation in expected market wages across individuals and over time. Combining this experiment with high frequency panel data on wages and individual work decisions, we document how labor supply responds to exogenous changes in expected market wages in a setting with virtually no restrictions on drive labor allocation. We find that there is i) systematic heterogeneity in labor supply responses both across drivers and within a driver over time, ii) significant fixed costs of beginning a shift, and iii) high rider demand when it is costly for drivers to work. These three findings motivate a model of labor supply with heterogeneous preferences over work schedules, adjustment costs, and statistical dependence between market wages and the costs of driving. We recover the labor supply elasticities and reservation wages of this dynamic labor supply model via a combination of experimental estimates and other data moments. We then perform counterfactual analyses that allow us to examine how preference heterogeneity and adjustment costs influence the responses of workers' to wage incentives as well as infer drivers' willingness to pay for the ability to customize and adjust their work schedule. We also show that a static approach to the driver's dynamic problem delivers materially different estimates of workers' labor supply elasticities and their value of job flexibility.

John A List, Ian Muir, Devin Pope, Gregory Sun

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Left-digit bias (or 99-cent pricing) has been discussed extensively in economics, psychology, and marketing. Despite this, we show that the rideshare company, Lyft, was not using a 99-cent pricing strategy prior to our study. Based on observational data from over 600 million Lyft sessions followed by a field experiment conducted with 21 million Lyft passengers, we provide evidence of large discontinuities in demand at dollar values. Approximately half of the downward slope of the demand curve occurs discontinuously as the price of a ride drops below a dollar value (e.g. $14.00 to $13.99). If our short run estimates persist in the longer run, we calculate that Lyft could increase its profits by roughly $160M per year by employing a left-digit bias pricing strategy. Our results showcase the robustness of an important behavioral bias for a large, modern company and its persistence in a highly-competitive market.