Papers - Natural

Uri Gneezy, Kenneth Leonard, John A List

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 5

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.

Fadi Hassan, Paolo Lucchino

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 30

More than 1.3 billion people worldwide have no access to electricity and this has first-order effects on several development dimensions. In this paper we focus on the link between access to light and education. We randomly distribute solar lamps to 7th grade pupils in rural Kenya and monitor their educational outcomes throughout the year at quarterly frequency. We find that access to lights through solar lamps is a relevant and effective input to education. Our identification strategy accounts for spillovers by exploiting the variation in treatment at the pupil level and in treatment intensity across classes. We find a positive and significant intention-to-treat effect as well as a positive and significant spillover effect on control students. In a class with the average treatment intensity of our sample (43%), treated students experience an increase in math grades of 0.88 standard deviations. Moreover, we find a positive marginal effect of treatment intensity on control students: raising the share of treated students in a class by 10% increases grades of control students by 0.22 standard deviations. We exploit household geolocation to disentangle within-class and geographical spillovers. We show that geographical spillovers do not have a significant impact and within-school interaction is the main source of spillovers. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that the mechanism through which lamps affect students is by increasing co-studying at school especially after sunset.

Lester Lusher

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 20

Procrastination, an issue linked to poor performance and decreased well-being, is a pervasive problem in education. This paper examines the role of commitment and motivation by evaluating a program called CollegeBetter.com which acts as a commitment device and monetary incentive to help college students battle problems of present bias. The zero-sum mechanism is based off a parimutuel betting market, where students join a pool by placing a monetary wager on themselves to achieve the pool's "commitment challenge." Students who successfully commit to the challenge 1) recover their wagers and 2) split losing wagers proportionally. Through a series of lab and field experiments, I find that students interested in the mechanism were low-achieving, overconfident, self-identified procrastinators, while traditional measures of time-preferences were weak predictors of selection. Across all pools, students randomly selected to participate were more likely to achieve the commitment challenge than students who applied for a spot but were randomly excluded. Consistent with loss aversion, having the student risk their own money is a principal contributor to the effectiveness of the mechanism.

Bruno Crepon, Julie Pernaudet

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 25

Disadvantaged youth are particularly at risk of under-investing in their health. Costs of healthcare and bias in health needs perceptions are likely to be key factors of underinvestment. Relying on a randomized experiment, we find that providing them with personalized information both on public health insurance and on their health status based on a medical diagnosis raises their curative and preventive investments. More specifically, they are more likely to consult a psychologist and to use contraception, while depression and risky sexual behaviors are key issues in this population. In order to distinguish between the two barriers, financial constraints and underestimation of health needs, we also test a program providing information on public health insurance only. This limited program improves their medical coverage in the same way as the combined program, but it does not translate into higher health investments. These findings highlight the importance of taking into account the role of subjective perceptions of health needs when considering health decisions among disadvantaged youth.

Brit Grosskopf, Graeme Pearce

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 63

We present a natural field experiment designed to measure other{regarding preferences in the market for taxis. We employed testers of varying ethnicity to take a number of predetermined taxi journeys. In each case we endowed them with only 80% of the expected fare. Testers revealed the amount they could afford to pay to the driver mid-journey and asked for a portion of the journey for free. In a 2x2 between{subjects design we vary the length of the journey and whether drivers havereputational concerns or not. We find that the majority of drivers give at least part of the journey for free and over 25% complete the journey. Giving is found to be proportional to the length of the journey, and the drivers' reputational concerns do not explain their behaviour. Evidence of strong out{group negativity against black testers by both white and South Asian drivers is also reported. In order to link our empirical analysis to behavioural theory we estimate the parameters of a number of utility functions. The data and the structural analysis lend support to the quantitative predictions of experiments that measure other{regarding preferences, and shed further light on how discrimination can manifest itself within our preferences.

Steven Blader, Claudine Gartenberg, Andrea Prat

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 19

This paper investigates how the success of a management practice depends on the nature of the long-term relationship between the firm and its employees. A large US transportation company is in the process of fitting its trucks with an electronic on-board recorder (EOBR), which provide drivers with information on their driving performance. In this setting, a natural question is whether the optimal managerial practice consists of: (1) Letting each driver know his or her individual performance only; or (2) Also providing drivers with information about their ranking with respect to other drivers. The company is also in the first phase of a multi-year initiative to remake its internal operations. This first phase corresponds to an overhaul of the relational contract with its employees, focusing exclusively on changing values toward a greater emphasis on teamwork and empowerment. The main result of our randomized experiment is that (2) leads to better performance than (1) in a particular site if and only if the site has not yet received the values intervention, and worse performance if it has. The result is consistent with the presence of a conflict between competition-based managerial practices and a cooperation-based relational contract. More broadly, it highlights the role of intangible relational factors in determining the optimal set of managerial practices.

Jana Gallus

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 28

This natural field experiment tests the effects of purely symbolic awards on volunteer retention in a public goods context. The experiment is conducted at Wikipedia, which faces declining editor retention rates, particularly among newcomers. Randomization assures that award receipt is orthogonal to previous performance. The analysis reveals that awards have a sizeable effect on newcomer retention, which persists over the four quarters following the initial intervention. This is noteworthy for indicating that awards for volunteers can be effective even if they have no impact on the volunteers' future career opportunities. The awards are purely symbolic, and the status increment they produce is limited to the recipients' pseudonymous online identities in a community they have just recently joined. The results can be explained by enhanced self-identification with the community, but they are also in line with recent findings on the role of status and reputation, recognition, and evaluation potential in online communities.

Nava Ashaf, Dean S Karlan, Wesley Yin

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 9

Commitment devices for savings could benefit those with self-control as well as familial or spousal control issues. We find evidence to support both motivations. We examine the impact of a commitment savings product in the Philippines on household decision making power and self-perception of savings behavior, as well as actual savings. The product leads to more decision making power in the household for women, and likewise more purchases of female-oriented durable goods. We also find that the product leads women who appear time-inconsistent in a baseline survey to self-report being a disciplined saver in the follow-up survey. For impact on savings balances, we find that the 81% increase in savings after one year did not crowd out savings held outside of the participating bank, but that the longer-term impact over two and a half years on bank savings dissipated to only a 33% increase, which is no longer statistically significant. We discuss reasons why the effect dissipated and the implications for designing and implementing sustainable, equilibrium-shifting interventions.

Jeffrey A Livingston

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 10

Problems that arise in online markets due to asymmetric information are exacerbated by the fact that transactions in these markets are completely anonymous. The online auction mechanism provided by eBay is an example of such a market. To combat the anonymity problem, eBay allows sellers to become "ID Verified" by paying a small fee to have their identity confirmed by a credit information company. Doing so may reassure potential bidders that the seller is legitimate since their identity is known, and there is more assurance that the seller could be tracked down and punished should a problem arise. Identifying the effect of ID verification is difficult using naturally occurring data, however, because the service tends to be used only by sellers who have a well-established reputation. It is thus difficult to determine whether an improved outcome is due to the seller's reputation or due to ID verification. This study alleviates this concern by conducting a field experiment where items are sold with different IDs that have different characteristics, and finds little evidence that bidders place any value on ID verification.

Laura Derksen, Adamson Muula, Joep van Oosterhout

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 18

The HIV epidemic in southern Africa has important consequences for economic development. The epidemic could be stopped by a universal test and treat policy, as antiretroviral drugs block the spread of the virus. However, demand for HIV testing and treatment are surprisingly low. This paper develops a model in which the decision to seek an HIV test is a signal of infection, and those who seek a test are subject to statistical discrimination from potential sexual partners. We evaluate an information experiment designed to test the theory, and find evidence that this form of discrimination is a significant barrier to HIV testing. In particular, we provide information at the community level on the public benefit of antiretroviral therapy: because the drugs prevent HIV transmission, a person who is tested and treated for HIV is a relatively safe sexual partner. This information reduces discrimination and increases HIV testing, with the strongest effects in communities where the new information becomes common knowledge. The results demonstrate that discrimination towards HIV positive individuals can be due to rational behavior by a misinformed public, and that providing new information can be an effective way to mitigate its effects.

David Court, Benjamin Gillen, Jordi McKenzie, Charles R Plott

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 21

Successful field tests were conducted on two new Information Aggregation Mechanisms (IAMs). The mechanisms collected information held as intuitions about opening weekend box office revenues for movies in Australia. Participants were film school students. One mechanism is similar to parimutuel betting that produces a probability distribution over box office amounts. Except for "art house films", the predicted distribution is indistinguishable from the actual revenues. The second mechanism is based on guesses of the guesses of others and applied when incentives for accuracy could not be used. It tested well against data and contains information not encompassed by the first mechanism.

Jie Bai

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 157

There is often a lack of reliable high quality provision in many markets in developing countries. I designed an experiment to understand this phenomenon in a setting that features typical market conditions in a developing country: the retail watermelon market in a major Chinese city. I begin by demonstrating empirically that there is substantial asymmetric information between sellers and buyers on sweetness, the key indicator of quality for watermelons, yet sellers do not sort and price watermelons by quality. I then randomly introduce one of two branding technologies into 40 out of 60 markets-one sticker label that is widely used and often counterfeited and one novel laser-cut label. I track sellers' quality, pricing and sales over an entire season and collect household panel purchasing data to examine the demand side's response. I find that laser branding induced sellers to provide higher quality and led to higher sales profits, establishing that reputational incentives are present and can be made to pay. However, after the intervention was withdrawn, all markets reverted back to baseline. To rationalize the experimental findings, I build an empirical model of consumer learning and seller reputation. The structural estimates suggest that consumers are hesitant to upgrade their perception about quality under the existing branding technology, which makes reputation building a low return investment. While the new technology enhances consumer learning, the resulting increase in profits is not sufficient to cover the fixed cost of the technology for small individual sellers. Counterfactual analysis shows that information frictions and fragmented markets lead to significant under-provision of quality. Third-party interventions that subsidize initial reputation building for sellers could improve welfare.

Tobias Heldt

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 16

In a natural experiment, this paper studies the impact of an informal sanctioning mechanism on individuals' voluntary contribution to a public good. Cross-country skiers' actual cash contributions in two ski resorts, one with and one without an informal sanctioning system, are used. I find the contributing share to be higher in the informal sanctioning system (79 percent) than in the non-sanctioning system (36 percent). Previous studies in one-shot public good situations have found an increasing conditional contribution (CC) function, i.e. the relationship between expected average contributions of other group members and the individual's own contribution. In contrast, the present results suggest that the CC-function in the non-sanctioning system is non-increasing at high perceived levels of others' contribution. This relationship deserves further testing in lab.

Anya Samek

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 54

The gender difference in competitiveness has been cited as an important factor driving the gender gap in labor market outcomes. Using a natural field experiment with 35,000 university students, I explore the impact of compensation scheme on willingness to apply for a job. I find that competitive compensation schemes disproportionately deter women from applying, which cannot be explained by differences in risk preferences alone. I also vary whether the job is introduced as helping a non-profit, which increases application rates, suggesting a role for social preferences in application decisions. Finally, I observe a correlation between competitiveness preferences and career choice.

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.

Donald P Green

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 1

This essay summarizes the results of a large-scale randomized experiment conducted during the 2000 election campaign by the NAACP National Voter Fund, which sought to mobilize African-American voters. Focusing solely on the direct mail and phone banking components of the NAACP-NVF campaign, this study examines the voting behavior of 980,208 participants residing in single-voter households, 1.7 percent of whom were randomly assigned to a control group. The experiment permits us to estimate (1) the extent to which the National Voter Fund's phone calls and direct mail increased voter turnout and (2) the approximate cost per vote. Within this sample, the NVF's two pieces of GOTV mail, three live phone calls, and two recorded phone calls had modest effects, generating approximately 7,100 additional votes at $158 per vote. The upper bound of a 90 percent confidence interval puts these figures at 16,214 additional votes at $69 per vote.

Alan S Gerber, Donald P Green, David W Nickerson

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 10

No abstract available

Laura Gee, Michael Schreck

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 11

Charitable giving has been about 2% of US GDP since the turn of the century. A popular fundraising tool is donation matching where every dollar is matched by a third party. But field experiments find that matching does not always increase donations. This may occur because individuals believe that peer donors will exhaust the matching funds. We develop a theory of how beliefs about peers' donations affect one's own likelihood of donation. We test our theory using novel "threshold match" treatments in field and laboratory experiments. These treatments form small groups and offer a flat matching bonus if a threshold number of donations is received. One "threshold match" treatment more than doubles the donation rate in the field relative to no match. To better understand the mechanism behind this huge increase, we use a lab study to replicate the field results and further show that beliefs about peers' donations matter. Our theoretical, lab, and field results combined suggest people are more likely to donate when they believe they are more pivotal to securing matching money. Beliefs about others matter, and they should be taken into account when trying to increase donations.

Pablo Celhay, Paul Gertler, Paula Giavagnoli, Christel Vermeersch

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 32

We show that fixed costs of adjustment as opposed to low returns likely explain why better quality care practices diffuse slowly in the medical industry. Using a randomized field experiment conducted in Argentina, we find that temporary financial incentives paid to health clinics for the early initiation of prenatal care 'nudged' providers to test and develop new data driven strategies to locate and encourage likely pregnant women to seek care in the first trimester of pregnancy. These innovations raised the rate of early initiation of prenatal care by 34% while the incentives were being paid in the treatment period. We follow health clinics over time and find that this increase persisted for at least 24 months after the incentives ended. In the absence of incentives, even though it is in the clinics' interest to stimulate early initiation of care, the presence of hard to change habits and cost of experimentation made it too expensive to develop and implement new methods to increase early initiation of care. Despite the large increases in early initiation of prenatal care, we find no effects on health outcomes.

Amanda Chuan, Anya Samek

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 4

We conducted a field experiment with a charitable group to investigate whether giving the donor an option to write a personal message to the recipient influences giving behavior. Over 1,500 households were approached in a door-to-door campaign and randomized to either a control or a treatment in which donors could include a card for the recipient. We predict that treatment should increase contributions through making the gift more meaningful, but may also decrease contribution rate by increasing the social or other cost of donating. We find evidence in favor of the cost effect, and no evidence of increased giving.