Papers - John A List

Daniel J Benjamin, James O Berger, Magnus Johannesson, Brian A Nosek, E. J Wagenmakers, Richard Berk, Kenneth A Bollen, Bjorn Brembs, Lawrence Brown, Colin F Camerer, David Cesarini, Christopher D. Chambers, Merlise Clyde, Thomas D Cook, Paul De Boeck, Zoltan Dienes, Anna Dreber, Kenny Easwaran, Charles Efferson, Ernst Fehr, Fiona Fidler, Andy P. Field, Malcom Forster, Edward I. George, Tarun Ramadorai, Richard Gonzalez, Steven Goodman, Edwin Green, Donald P Green, Anthony Greenwald, Jarrod D. Hadfield, Larry V. Hedges, Leonhard Held, Teck Hau Ho, Herbert Hoijtink, James Holland Jones, Daniel J Hruschka, Kosuke Imai, Guido Imbens, John P.A. Ioannidis, Minjeong Jeon, Michael Kirchler, David Laibson , John A List, Roderick Little, Arthur Lupia, Edouard Machery, Scott E. Maxwell, Michael McCarthy, Don Moore, Stephen L. Morgan, Marcus Munafo, Shinichi Nakagawa, Brendan Nyhan, Timothy H Parker, Luis Pericchi, Marco Perugini, Jeff Rouder, Judith Rousseau, Victoria Savalei, Felix D. Schonbrodt, Thomas Sellke, Betsy Sinclair, Dustin Tingley, Trisha Van Zandt, Simine Vazire, Duncan J. Watts, Christopher Winship, Robert L. Wolpert, Yu Xie, Cristobal Young, Jonathan Zinman, Valen E. Johnson

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 965

We propose to change the default P-value threshold for statistical significance for claims of new discoveries from 0.05 to 0.005.

Luigi Butera, John A List

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 355

Novel empirical insights by their very nature tend to be unanticipated, and in some cases at odds with the current state of knowledge on the topic. The mechanics of statistical inference suggest that such initial findings, even when robust and statistically significant within the study, should not appreciably move priors about the phenomenon under investigation. Yet, a few well-conceived independent replications dramatically improve the reliability of novel findings. Nevertheless, the incentives to replicate are seldom in place in the sciences, especially within the social sciences. We propose a simple incentive-compatible mechanism to promote replications, and use experimental economics to highlight our approach. We begin by reporting results from an experiment in which we investigate how cooperation in allocation games is affected by the presence of Knightian uncertainty (ambiguity), a pervasive and yet unexplored characteristic of most public goods. Unexpectedly, we find that adding uncertainty enhances cooperation. This surprising result serves as a test case for our mechanism: instead of sending this paper to a peer-reviewed journal, we make it available online as a working paper, but we commit never to submit it to a journal for publication. We instead offered co-authorship for a second, yet to be written, paper to other scholars willing to independently replicate our study. That second paper will reference this working paper, will include all replications, and will be submitted to a peer- reviewed journal for publication. Our mechanism allows mutually-beneficial gains from trade between the original investigators and other scholars, alleviates the publication bias problem that often surrounds novel experimental results, and accelerates the advancement of economic science by leveraging the mechanics of statistical inference.

John A List, Azeem M Shaikh, Yang Xu

Cited by*: 33 Downloads*: 278

Empiricism in the sciences allows us to test theories, formulate optimal policies, and learn how the world works. In this manner, it is critical that our empirical work provides accurate conclusions about underlying data patterns. False positives represent an especially important problem, as vast public and private resources can be misguided if we base decisions on false discovery. This study explores one especially pernicious influence on false positives-multiple hypothesis testing (MHT). While MHT potentially affects all types of empirical work, we consider three common scenarios where MHT influences inference within experimental economics: jointly identifying treatment effects for a set of outcomes, estimating heterogenous treatment effects through subgroup analysis, and conducting hypothesis testing for multiple treatment conditions. Building upon the work of Romano and Wolf (2010), we present a correction procedure that incorporates the three scenarios, and illustrate the improvement in power by comparing our results with those obtained by the classic studies due to Bonferroni (1935) and Holm (1979). Importantly, under weak assumptions, our testing procedure asymptotically controls the familywise error rate - the probability of one false rejection - and is asymptotically balanced. We showcase our approach by revisiting the data reported in Karlan and List (2007), to deepen our understanding of why people give to charitable causes.

John A List, Anya Samek, Dana L Suskind

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 258

Behavioral economics and field experiments within the social sciences have advanced well beyond academic curiosum. Governments around the globe as well as the most powerful firms in modern economies employ staffs of behavioralists and experimentalists to advance and test best practices. In this study, we combine behavioral economics with field experiments to reimagine a new model of early childhood education. Our approach has three distinct features. First, by focusing public policy dollars on prevention rather than remediation, we call for much earlier educational programs than currently conceived. Second, our approach has parents at the center of the education production function rather than at its periphery. Third, we advocate attacking the macro education problem using a public health methodology, rather than focusing on piecemeal advances.

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

John A List, Robert D Metcalfe, Michael H Taylor, Ivo Vlaev

Cited by*: 44 Downloads*: 193

Tax collection problems date back to the earliest recorded history of mankind. This paper begins with a simple theoretical construct of paying (rather than declaring) taxes, which we argue has been an overlooked aspect of tax compliance. This construct is then tested in two large natural field experiments. Using administrative data from more than 200,000 individuals in the UK, we show that including social norms and public goods messages in standard tax payment reminder letters considerably enhances tax compliance. The field experiments increased taxes collected by the Government in the sample period and were cost-free to implement, demonstrating the potential importance of such interventions in increasing tax compliance.

Steven D Levitt, John A List, Susanne Neckermann, Sally Sadoff

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 161

Research on behavioral economics has established the importance of factors such as reference dependent preferences, hyperbolic preferences, and the value placed on non-financial rewards. To date, these insights have had little impact on the way the educational system operates. Through a series of field experiments involving thousands of primary and secondary school students, we demonstrate the power of behavioral economics to influence educational performance. Several insights emerge. First, we find that incentives framed as losses have more robust effects than comparable incentives framed as gains. Second, we find that non-financial incentives are considerably more cost-effective than financial incentives for younger students, but were not effective with older students. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, consistent with hyperbolic discounting, all motivating power of the incentives vanishes when rewards are handed out with a delay. Since the rewards to educational investment virtually always come with a delay, our results suggest that the current set of incentives may lead to under-investment. For policymakers, our findings imply that in the absence of immediate incentives, many students put forth low effort on standardized tests, which may create biases in measures of student ability, teacher value added, school quality, and achievement gaps.

Anthony Heyes, John A List

Cited by*: 2 Downloads*: 157

No abstract available

Uri Gneezy, John A List, Jeffrey A Livingston, Xiangdong Qin, Sally Sadoff, Yang Xu

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 124

Tests measuring and comparing educational achievement are an important policy tool. We experimentally show that offering students extrinsic incentives to put forth effort on such achievement tests has differential effects across cultures. Offering incentives to U.S. students, who generally perform poorly on assessments, improved performance substantially. In contrast, Shanghai students, who are top performers on assessments, were not affected by incentives. Our findings suggest that in the absence of extrinsic incentives, ranking countries based on low-stakes assessments is problematic because test scores reflect differences in intrinsic motivation to perform well on the test itself, and not just differences in ability.

James Cox, John A List, Michael K Price, Vjollca Sadiraj, Anya Samek

Cited by*: 2 Downloads*: 123

The literature exploring other regarding behavior sheds important light on interesting social phenomena, yet less attention has been given to how the received results speak to foundational assumptions within economics. Our study synthesizes the empirical evidence, showing that recent work challenges convex preference theory but is largely consistent with rational choice theory. Guided by this understanding, we design a new, more demanding test of a central tenet of economics - the contraction axiom - within a sharing framework. Making use of more than 325 dictators participating in a series of allocation games, we show that sharing choices violate the contraction axiom. We advance a new theory that augments standard models with moral reference points to explain our experimental data. Our theory also organizes the broader sharing patterns in the received literature.

John A List

Cited by*: 49 Downloads*: 123

Laboratory experiments have been used extensively in economics in the past several decades to lend both positive and normative insights into a myriad of important economic issues. This study discusses a related approach that has increasingly grown in prominence of late--field experiments. I argue that field experiments serve as a useful bridge between data generated in the lab and empirical studies using naturally-occurring data. In discussing this relationship, I highlight that field experiments can yield important insights into economic theory and provide useful guidance to policymakers. I also draw attention to an important methodological contribution of field experiments: they provide an empirical account of behavioral principles that are shared across different domains. In this regard, at odds with conventional wisdom, I argue that representativeness of the environment, rather than representative of the sampled population, is the most crucial variable in determining generalizability of results for a large class of experimental laboratory games.

James Andreoni, Michael Kuhn, John A List, Anya Samek, Charles Sprenger

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 119

Time preferences have been correlated with a range of life outcomes, yet little is known about their early development. We conduct a field experiment to elicit time preferences of nearly 1,000 children ages 3-12, who make several inter temporal decisions. To shed light on how such primitives form, we explore various channels that might affect time preferences, from background characteristics to the causal impact of an early schooling program that we developed and operated. Our results suggest that time preferences evolve substantially during this period with younger children displaying more impatience than older children. We also find a strong association with race: black children, relative to white or Hispanic children, are more impatient. Interestingly, parents of black children are also much more impatient than parents of white and Hispanic children. Finally, assignment to different schooling opportunities is not significantly associated with child time preferences.

John A List, Paramita Sinha, Michael H Taylor

Cited by*: 33 Downloads*: 116

Critics of stated preference methods argue that hypothetical bias precludes survey techniques from providing reliable economic values for non-market goods and services, rendering estimation of the total economic benefits of public programs fruitless. This paper explores a relatively new methodology to obtain the total value of non-market goods and services-choice experiments-which conveniently provide information on the purchase decision as well as the characteristic value vector. The empirical work revolves around examining behavior in two very different field settings. In the first field study, we explore hypothetical bias in the purchase decision by eliciting contributions for a threshold public good in an actual capital campaign. To extend the analysis a level deeper, in a second field experiment we examine both the purchase decision and the marginal value vector via inspection of consumption decisions in an actual marketplace. In support of the new valuation design, both field experiments provide some evidence that hypothetical choice experiments combined with ""cheap talk"" can yield credible estimates of the purchase decision. Furthermore, we find no evidence of hypothetical bias when estimating marginal attribute values. Yet, we do find that the ""cheap talk"" component might induce internal inconsistency of subjects' preferences in the choice experiment.

David Laibson , John A List

Cited by*: 2 Downloads*: 114

There are many great ways to incorporate behavioral economics in a first-year undergraduate economics class-i.e., the course that is typically called "Principles of Economics." Our preferred approach integrates behavioral economics throughout the course (e.g., see Acemoglu, Laibson, and List 2015). With the integrated approach, behavioral content plays a role in many of the chapters of the principles of economics curriculum, including chapters on optimization, equilibrium, game theory, intertemporal choice, probability and risk, social preferences, household finance, the labor market, financial intermediation, monetary policy, economic fluctuations, and financial crises. We prefer the integrated approach because it enables the behavioral insights to show up where they are conceptually most relevant. By illustration, it is best to combine a discussion of downward nominal wage rigidity (i.e., the idea that workers strongly resist nominal wage declines) with the overall discussion of the labor market. Whether or not an instructor integrates behavioral economics throughout the principles of economics course, it makes sense to pull central materials together and dedicate a lecture (or more) to a focused discussion of behavioral economics. This note describes our approach to such a lecture, emphasizing six key principles of behavioral economics. Our choice of content for a behavioral lecture is motivated by three factors. First, we include ideas that are conceptually important. Second, we include material that is practically important and personally relevant to our students-we have found that such content resonates long after the course ends. Third, we include content that relates to what has been (or will be) taught in the rest of the course, and therefore serves as a complement. We want students to see that behavioral economics is an integrated part of economics, not a freak show that is isolated from "the standard ingredients" in the rest of the economics course. This paper summarizes our approach to such a focused behavioral lecture. In Section I, we define behavioral economics and place it in historical context. In Section II, we introduce six modular principles that can be used to teach behavioral economics. We provide PowerPoint notes on our home pages, which instructors should feel free to edit and use.

John A List

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 111

Not applicable.

Jeffrey A Flory, Andreas Leibbrandt, John A List

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 109

Workplace misbehaviors are often governed by explicit monitoring and strict punishment. Such enforcement activities can serve to lessen worker productivity and harm worker morale. We take a different approach to curbing worker misbehaviour - bonuses. Examining more than 6500 donor phone calls across more than 80 workers, we use a natural field experiment to investigate how different wage contracts influence workers' propensity to break workplace rules in harmful ways. Our findings show that even though standard relative performance pay contracts, relative to a fixed wage scheme, increase productivity, they have a dark side: they cause considerable cheating and sabotage of co-workers. Yet, even in such environments, by including an unexpected bonus, the employer can substantially curb worker misbehavior. In this manner, our findings reveal how employers can effectively leverage bonuses to eliminate undesired behaviors induced by performance pay contracts.

Glenn W Harrison, John A List

Cited by*: 644 Downloads*: 105

Experimental economists are leaving the reservation. They are recruiting subjects in the field rather than in the classroom, using field goods rather than induced valuations, and using field context rather than abstract terminology in instructions. We argue that there is something methodologically fundamental behind this trend. Field experiments differ from laboratory experiments in many ways. Although it is tempting to view field experiments as simply less controlled variants of laboratory experiments, we argue that to do so would be to seriously mischaracterize them. What passes for "control" in laboratory experiments might in fact be precisely the opposite if it is artificial to the subject or context of the task. We propose six factors that can be used to determine the field context of an experiment: the nature of the subject pool, the nature of the information that the subjects bring to the task, the nature of the commodity, the nature of the task or trading rules applied, the nature of the stakes, and the environment that subjects operate in.

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

Cited by*: 262 Downloads*: 100

This study examines individual behavior in two well-functioning marketplaces to investigate whether market experience eliminates the endowment effect. Field evidence from both markets suggests that individual behavior converges to the neoclassical prediction as market experience increases. In an experimental test of whether these observations are due to treatment (market experience) or selection (e.g., static preferences), I find that market experience plays a significant role in eliminating the endowment effect. I also find that these results are robust to institutional change and extend beyond the two marketplaces studied. Overall, this study provides strong evidence that market experience eliminates an important market anomaly.

Uri Gneezy, Andreas Leibbrandt, John A List

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 98

Competitiveness pervades life: plants compete for sunlight and water, animals for territory and food, and humans for mates and income. Here we investigate human competitiveness with a natural experiment and a set of behavioral experiments. We compare competitiveness in traditional fishing societies where local natural forces determine whether fishermen work in isolation or in collectives. We find sharp evidence that fishermen from individualistic societies are far more competitive than fishermen from collectivistic societies and that this difference emerges with work experience. These findings suggest that humans can evolve traits to specific needs, support the idea that socio-ecological factors play a decisive role for individual competitiveness, and provide evidence how individualistic and collectivistic societies shape economic behaviour.