Papers - John A List

John A List, William S Neilson, Michael K Price

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 101

Recent theoretical and empirical studies have explored the effect of group membership and identity on individual decision-making. This line of research highlights that economic models focusing on the individual as the sole entity in the decision-making environment potentially miss critical features. This study takes this literature in a new direction by overlaying a field experiment onto a setting where groups have arisen naturally. Our experimental laboratory is large open air markets, where we are able to examine the effects of group membership on seller's collusive behavior as measured by prices and surplus allocations. This permits us to explore strategic implications of group composition. Empirical results illustrate the importance of group composition on pricing decisions, and show that deviations from Nash equilibrium are crucially related to group membership.

John A List, David Lucking-Reiley

Cited by*: 161 Downloads*: 25

We test two recent theories on the subject of charitable fundraising in capital campaigns. Andreoni (1998) predicts that publicly announced seed contributions can increase the total amount of charitable giving in a capital campaign. Bagnoli and Lipman (1989) predict that another technique for increasing contributions is a promise to refund donors' money in case the campaign threshold is not reached. Using a field experiment in a capital campaign for the Center for Environmental Policy Analysis at the University of Central Florida, we present evidence on both of these predictions. Data from direct mail solicitations sent to 3000 Central Floridian residents confirm the basic comparative-static predictions of both theories: total contributions increase with the amount of seed money, and with the use of a refund policy. A change in seed money from 10% to 67% of the campaign goal resulted in nearly a sixfold increase in contributions, while imposing a refund increased contributions by a more modest 20%. Seed money has a statistically significant effect on both the proportion of people choosing to donate and on the average gift size of those who donate, while refunds have a statistically significant effect only on the average gift size. These results have clear implications for practitioners in the design of fundraising campaigns.

Craig Gallet, John A List

Cited by*: 61 Downloads*: 10

This paper uses a new panel data set on state-level sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 1929-1994 to test the appropriateness of the 'one size fits all' reduced-form regression approach commonly used in the environmental Kuznets curve literature. Empirical results provide initial evidence that an inverted-U shape characterizes the relationship between per capita emissions and per capita incomes at the state level. Parameter estimates suggest, however, that previous studies, which restrict cross-sections to undergo identical experiences over time, may be presenting statistically biased results.

John A List, Daniel L Millimet, Thanasis Stengos

Cited by*: 32 Downloads*: 1

We explore the importance of modeling strategies when estimating the emissions-income relationship. Using U.S. state-level panel data on nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions, we estimate several environmental Kuznets curves using the standard parametric framework as well as a more flexible semiparametric alternative. Formal statistical comparisons of the results overwhelmingly reject the parametric approach. Moreover, the differences, particularly for sulfur dioxide, are economically significant.

Cody Cook, Rebecca Diamond, Jonathan Hall, John A List, Paul Oyer

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 60

The growth of the "gig" economy generates worker flexibility that, some have speculated, will favor women. We explore one facet of the gig economy by examining labor supply choices and earnings among more than a million rideshare drivers on Uber in the U.S. Perhaps most surprisingly, we find that there is a roughly 7% gender earnings gap among drivers. The uniqueness of our data - knowing exactly the production and compensation functions - permits us to completely unpack the underlying determinants of the gender earnings gap. We find that the entire gender gap is caused by three factors: experience on the platform (learning-by-doing), preferences over where/when to work, and preferences for driving speed. This suggests that, as the gig economy grows and brings more flexibility in employment, women's relatively high opportunity cost of non-paid-work time and gender-based preference differences can perpetuate a gender earnings gap even in the absence of discrimination.

Craig E Landry, Andreas Lange, John A List, Michael K Price, Nicholas G Rupp

Cited by*: 3 Downloads*: 1

An important dialogue between theorists and experimentalists over the past few decades has raised the study of the interaction of psychological and economic incentives from academic curiosity to a bona fide academic field. One recent area of study within this genre that has sparked interest and debate revolves around the "hidden costs" of conditional incentives. This study overlays randomization on a naturally-occurring environment in a series of temporally-linked field experiments to advance our understanding of the economics of charity and test if such "costs" exist in the field. This approach permits us to examine why people initially give to charities, and what factors keep them committed to the cause. Several key findings emerge. First, there are hidden benefits of conditional incentives that would have gone undetected had we maintained a static theory and an experimental design that focused on short run substitution effects rather than dynamic interactions. Second, we can reject the pure altruism model of giving. Third, we find that public good provision is maximized in both the short and long run by using conditional, rather than unconditional, incentives.

Ernst Fehr, John A List

Cited by*: 154 Downloads*: 15

We examine experimentally how Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) respond to incentives and how they provide incentives in situations requiring trust and trustworthiness. As a control we compare the behavior of CEOs with the behavior of students. We find that CEOs are considerably more trusting and exhibit more trustworthiness than students--thus reaching substantially higher efficiency levels than students. Moreover, we find that, for CEOs as well as for students, incentives based on explicit threats to penalize shirking backfire by inducing less trustworthy behavior--giving rise to hidden costs of incentives. However, the availability of penalizing incentives also creates hidden returns: if a principal expresses trust by voluntarily refraining from implementing the punishment threat, the agent exhibits significantly more trustworthiness than if the punishment threat is not available. Thus trust seems to reinforce trustworthy behavior. Overall, trustworthiness is highest if the threat to punish is available but not used, while it is lowest if the threat to punish is used. Paradoxically, however, most CEOs and students use the punishment threat, although CEOs use it significantly less.

Alec Brandon, Christopher M Clapp, John A List, Robert D Metcalfe, Michael K Price

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Smart-home technologies have been heralded as an important way to increase energy conservation. While in vitro engineering estimates provide broad optimism, little has been done to explore whether such estimates scale beyond the lab. We estimate the causal impact of smart thermostats on energy use via two novel framed field experiments in which a random subset of treated households have a smart thermostat installed in their home. Examining 18 months of associated high-frequency data on household energy consumption, yielding more than 16 million hourly electricity and daily natural gas observations, we find little evidence that smart thermostats have a statistically or economically significant effect on energy use. We explore potential mechanisms using almost four million observations of system events including human interactions with their smart thermostat. Results indicate that user behavior dampens energy savings and explains the discrepancy between estimates from engineering models, which assume a perfectly compliant subject, and actual households, who are occupied by users acting in accord with behavioral economists' conjectures. In this manner, our data document a keen threat to the scalability of new user-based technologies.

John A List, Daniel Rondeau

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 7

Evidence suggests that contributions to capital campaigns increase with the value of leadership gifts. We examine the response of subjects to the announcement of leadership gifts and its implied change in the campaign's target. The two effects are partitioned.

Greer K Gosnell, John A List, Robert D Metcalfe

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Increasing evidence indicates the importance of management in determining firms' productivity. Yet, causal evidence regarding the effectiveness of management practices is scarce, especially for high-skilled workers in the developed world. In an eight-month field experiment measuring the productivity of captains in the commercial aviation sector, we test four distinct management practices: (i) performance monitoring; (ii) performance feedback; (iii) target setting; and (iv) prosocial incentives. We find that these management practices -particularly performance monitoring and target setting- significantly increase captains' productivity with respect to the targeted fuel-saving dimensions. We identify positive spillovers of the tested management practices on job satisfaction and carbon dioxide emissions, and captains overwhelmingly express desire for deeper managerial engagement. Both the implementation and the results of the study reveal an uncharted opportunity for management researchers to delve into the black box of firms and rigorously examine the determinants of productivity amongst skilled labor.

John A List, Rohen Shah

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

In organizations, teams are ubiquitous. "Weakest Link" and "Best Shot" are incentive schemes that tie a group member's compensation to the output of their group's least and most productive member, respectively. In this paper, we test the impact of these incentive schemes by conducting two pilot RCTs (one in-person, one online), which included more than 250 graduate students in a graduate math class. Students were placed in study groups of three or four students, and then groups were randomized to either control, Weakest Link, or Best Shot incentives. We find evidence that such incentive approaches can affect test scores, both in-person and online.

Stefano DellaVigna, John A List, Ulrike Malmendier, Gautam Rao

Cited by*: 19 Downloads*: 71

Do men and women have different social preferences? Previous findings are contradictory. We provide a potential explanation using evidence from a field experiment. In a door-to-door solicitation, men and women are equally generous, but women become less generous when it becomes easy to avoid the solicitor. Our structural estimates of the social preference parameters suggest an explanation: women are more likely to be on the margin of giving, partly because of a less dispersed distribution of altruism. We find similar results for the willingness to complete an unpaid survey: women are more likely to be on the margin of participation.

Craig Gallet, John A List

Cited by*: 12 Downloads*: 4

Recent research has posited that, in advanced economies, there is a positive correlation between income inequality and development. Using a new unbalanced panel dataset for 71 countries from 1961 to 1992, we present evidence that supports this conjecture. Although many factors may be contributing to this renewed positive relationship between growth and inequality, one plausible explanation rests on the shift away from a manufacturing base towards a service base in most advanced economies.

Michael Hallsworth, John A List, Robert D Metcalfe, Ivo Vlaev

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 82

Framing remains one of the pillars of behavioral economics. While framing effects have been found to be quite important in the lab, what is less clear is how well evidence drawn from naturally-occurring settings conforms to received laboratory insights. We use debt obligation to the UK government as a case study to explore the 'omission bias' present in decision making with large stakes. Using a natural field experiment that generates nearly 40,000 observations, we find that repayment rates are roughly doubled when the act is reframed as one of commission rather than omission. We estimate that this reframing of the perceived nature of the action generated over $1.3 million of new yield. We find evidence that this behavior may result from a deliberate 'omission strategy', rather than a behavioral bias, as is often assumed in the literature. Our natural field experiment highlights that behavioral economics is much more than a series of empirical exercises to quench the intellectual curiosity of academics.

John A List, Daniel L Millimet

Cited by*: 20 Downloads*: 35

Assumptions of individual rationality and preference stability provide the foundation for a convenient and tractable modeling approach. While both of these assumptions have come under scrutiny in distinct literatures, the two lines of research remain disjointed. This study begins by explicitly linking the two literatures while providing insights into perhaps the central issue facing behavioral economics today: to what extent does market experience mitigate various forms of individual irrationality? We find considerable evidence that the market is a catalyst for rationality. The study then focuses on aggregate market outcomes by examining empirically whether individual rationality is a prerequisite for market efficiency. Using field data gathered from more than 380 subjects of age 6-18 in multi-lateral bargaining markets at a shopping mall, we find that the market is a filter of irrationality--even when markets are populated solely by irrational buyers, aggregate market outcomes quickly converge to neoclassical predictions.

John A List

Cited by*: 33 Downloads*: 10

Through good and bad economic times, charitable gifts have continued to roll in largely unabated over the past half century. In a typical year, total charitable gifts of money now exceed 2 percent of gross domestic product. Moreover, charitable giving has nearly doubled in real terms since 1990, and the number of nonprofit organizations registered with the IRS grew by nearly 60 percent from 1995 to 2005. This study provides a perspective on the economic interplay of three types of actors: donors, charitable organizations, and government. How much is given annually? Who gives? Who are the recipients of these gifts? Would changes in the tax treatment of charitable contributions lead to more or less giving? How can charitable institutions design mechanisms to generate the greatest level of gifts? What about the effectiveness of seed money and matching grants?

Richard Damania, Per Fredriksson , John A List

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 5

This study uses a three-stage common agency model to explore the linkages between trade policy, corruption and environmental policy in an imperfect market setting. We show that the effect of trade liberalization on the stringency of environmental policy depends critically on the level of corruption-in relatively corrupt countries, trade openness leads to more stringent environmental policy. In such countries, this interaction, therefore, lends trade liberalization a type of "multiplier effect," raising both economic growth and environmental policy stringency.

John A List

Cited by*: 120 Downloads*: 86

Empirical studies have provided evidence that discrimination exists in various markets, but they rarely allow the analyst to draw conclusions concerning the nature of discrimination. By combining data from bilateral negotiations in the sportscard market with complementary field experiments, this study provides a framework that amends this shortcoming. The experimental design, which includes data gathered from more than 1100 market participants, provides sharp findings: (i) there is a strong tendency for minorities to receive initial and final offers that are inferior to those received by majorities, and (ii) overall, the data indicate that the observed discrimination is not due to animus, but represents statistical discrimination.

Gary Charness, John A List, Aldo Rustichini, Anya Samek, Jeroen van de Ven

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to correctly attribute mental states to others, is important in social interactions. We evaluate the development of ToM in about 800 mostly disadvantaged children. We next conduct a field experiment with about 160 children in which we find that the low ToM rates for these disadvantaged children improve substantially in environments where the presence of other children is made salient. We see that ToM performance increases for both younger and older children in the treatment with strong salience, but that the treatment with weaker salience seems to be only effective in improving the ToM rates for older children.

Ufuk Akcigit, Fernando Alvarez, Stephane Bonhomme, George M Constantinides, Douglas W Diamond, Eugene F Fama, David W Galenson, Michael Greenstone, Lars Peter Hansen, Uhlig Harald, James J Heckman, Ali Hortacsu, Emir Kamenica, Greg Kaplan, Anil K Kashyap, Steven D Levitt, John A List, Robert E Lucas Jr., Magne Mogstad, Roger Myerson, Derek Neal, Canice Prendergast, Raghuram G Rajan, Philip J Reny, Azeem M Shaikh, Robert Shimer, Hugo F Sonnenschein, Nancy L Stokey, Richard H Thaler, Robert H Topel, Robert Vishny, Luigi Zingales

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 207

No abstract available