Papers - Natural

Mary Kay Gugerty, Michael Kremer

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 7

Many argue that organizations of the disadvantaged create positive externalities, and in particular strengthen the position of these groups in society. A natural inference is that these organizations should be subsidized. We argue that the benefits of expanding the operations of these groups must be set against the potential costs of weakening the role of the disadvantaged in these organizations. A prospective, randomized evaluation of a development program targeted at strengthening rural women's groups in western Kenya suggests that the program did not improve group strength or functioning as measured by participation rates, assistance to members, and assistance to other community projects. The funding did, however, change the very characteristics of the groups that made them attractive to funders in the first place. Younger, more educated women and women employed in the formal sector joined the groups, and men and better-educated and wealthier women moved into key leadership positions.

Egil Matsen, Bjarne Strom

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 7

This paper examines data from the Norwegian television game show Joker, where contestants make well-specified choices under risk. The game involves very large stakes, randomly drawn contestants, and ample opportunities for learning. Expected utility (EU) theory gives a simple prediction of choice under weak conditions, as one choice is always first-order stochastically dominating. We document frequent, systematic and costly violations of dominance. Most alternative theories fail to add explanatory power beyond the EU benchmark, but many contestants appear to have a systematic expectation bias that can be related to Tversky and Kahneman's (1973) "availability heuristic". In addition, there seems to be a stochastic element in choice that is well captured by the so-called Fechner model.

Nick Drydakis

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 7

This research examines the possible discrimination faced by gay men compared to heterosexuals when applying for jobs in the Greek private sector. This issue was addressed through the observation of employer hiring decisions. Mailing pairs of curriculum vitae, distinguished only by the sexual orientation of the applicants, led to the observation that gay men faced a significantly lower chance of receiving an invitation for an interview. However, in cases where employers called applicants back, the wages offered did not differ significantly between gay and heterosexual applicants. Nevertheless, there is substantial evidence to suggest that discrimination based on sexual orientation does exist in the Greek labour market, and at alarmingly high levels.

Michael Kremer, Edward Miguel

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 6

Intestinal helminths - including hookworm, roundworm, schistosomiasis, and whipworm - infect more than one-quarter of the world's population. A randomized evaluation of a project in Kenya suggests that school-based mass treatment with deworming drugs reduced school absenteeism in treatment schools by one quarter; gains are especially large among the youngest children. Deworming is found to be cheaper than alternative ways of boosting school participation. By reducing disease transmission, deworming creates substantial externality health and school participation benefits among untreated children in the treatment schools and among children in neighboring schools. These externalities are large enough to justify fully subsidizing treatment. We do not find evidence that deworming improves academic test scores. Existing experimental studies, in which treatment is randomized among individuals in the same school, find small and insignificant deworming treatment effects on education; however, these studies underestimate true treatment effects if deworming creates positive externalities for the control group and reduces treatment group attrition.

Pieter A Gautier, Bas van der Klaauw

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 6

We use data from a promotion campaign of NH-Hoteles to study self-selection of participants in a gift-exchange experiment. The promotion campaign allowed guests to pay any non negative amount of money for a stay in one of 36 hotels in Belgium and the Netherlands. The data allow us to distinguish between `regular guests', who booked prior to the announcement of the promotion campaign and guests who booked after the campaign was announced. During the promotion campaign we varied the posted price of a room that was communicated to the guests. Only the regular guests respond to the exogenous variation in the posted price and they pay substantially more on average. This different behavior cannot be explained by differences in satisfaction or observed compositional differences between both groups. We argue that the promotion campaign mainly attracted individuals who find it relatively unimportant to be viewed of as prosocial.

Paul Dolan, Robert D Metcalfe

Cited by*: 8 Downloads*: 6

There is increasing research on the exogenous impact of descriptive social norms on economic behavior. The research to date has a number of limitations: 1) it has not de-coupled the impact of the norm and the knowledge required to understand how to change behavior based upon it; 2) it has exclusively used offline but not online (i.e. emails) methods; and 3) it has not understood the impact of financial incentives in conjunction with norms. We address these three limitations using two natural field experiments. We find, firstly, that norms change energy behavior over a 15 month treatment period irrespective of whether information is provided or not. We find that social norms reduce consumption by around 6% (0.2 standard deviations). Norms have has their largest impact on the day that information on the social norm is received, and then decreases over time. Secondly, we do not find that social norms work online (even with experienced consumers who are used to online billing) - social norms de- livered online may have very little beneficial effects on reducing energy use. Thirdly, we find that large financial rewards work very well online in reducing consumption, with a 0.35 change in energy consumption over a four month period. Perhaps most interestingly, we find that the large effect of financial incentives is completely removed when information on social norms is added online.

John A List, Michael K Price

Cited by*: 3 Downloads*: 6

This study showcases the usefulness of field experiments to the study of environmental and resource economics. Our focus pertains to work related to field experiments in the area of 'behavioral' environmental and resource economics. Within this rubric, we discuss research in two areas: those that inform i) benefit cost analysis and ii) conservation of resources. Within each realm, we show how field experiments have been able to test the relevant theories, provide important parameters to construct new theories, and guide policymakers. We conclude with thoughts on how field experiments can be used to deepen our understanding of important areas within environmental and resource economics.

Macartan Humphreys, William Masters, Martin Sandbu

Cited by*: 6 Downloads*: 6

Despite a widespread trend towards the adoption of increasingly participatory approaches to political decision-making in developing countries there is little or no evidence that these practices in fact return the benefits attributed to them. We present an empirical investigation into one specific worry-that participatory decision processes may be vulnerable to manipulation by elites. We report on a field experiment on the effects of leaders, drawing on a unique nationwide experiment in democratic deliberation in Sao Tome and Principe. In these deliberations, meetings were moderated by discussion leaders who were randomly assigned to run meetings around the country. The randomization procedure provides a rare opportunity to identify the impact of leaders on the outcomes of group deliberations. We find that leadership effects were extremely large, in many cases accounting for over one third of all variation in the outcomes of the national discussions. These results have important implications for the design of such deliberative practices. While the total effect of leadership cannot be assessed, it is possible to observe leadership effects and to correct for variation in outcomes of meetings.

Amanda Kowalski

Cited by*: 4 Downloads*: 6

I examine treatment effect heterogeneity within an experiment to inform external validity. The local average treatment effect (LATE) gives an average treatment effect for compliers. I bound and estimate average treatment effects for always takers and never takers by extending marginal treatment effect methods. I use these methods to separate selection from treatment effect heterogeneity, generalizing the comparison of OLS to LATE. Applying these methods to the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, I find that the treatment effect of insurance on emergency room utilization decreases from always takers to compliers to never takers. Previous utilization explains a large share of the treatment effect heterogeneity. Extrapolations show that other expansions could increase or decrease utilization.

Joshua D Clinton, John S Lapinski

Cited by*: 6 Downloads*: 6

Scholars disagree whether negative advertising demobilizes or stimulates the electorate. We use an experiment with over 10,200 eligible voters to evaluate the two leading hypotheses of negative political advertising. We extend the analysis to examine whether advertising differentially impacts the turnout of voter subpopulations depending on the advertisement's message. In the short term, we find no evidence that exposure to negative advertisements decreases turnout and little that suggests it increases turnout. Any effect appears to depend upon the message of the advertisement and the characteristics of the viewer. In the long term, we find little evidence that the information contained in the treatment groups' advertisements is sufficient to systematically alter turnout.

John A List, Daniel L Millimet

Cited by*: 3 Downloads*: 6

Devolution of tasks to local levels of government has recently become a popular agenda item within certain political factions in the US. While one expects the local policymaker to tailor policies to match the preferences of his constituents, critics of local policymaking claim that externalities are ignored and inefficiencies thus arise under local control of certain policies. A primary example concerns the control of pollution, which is known to have adverse effects on neighbouring jurisdictions. Whether localities actually 'race to the bottom' and enact lax environmental policies when given the chance remains an open issue. In this study, we make use of stochastic dominance tests to examine if President Reagan's policy of 'New Federalism' in the early 1980s induced states to lower environmental standards. Among the several environmental measures analysed, we do not find any evidence that the 'race to the bottom' materialized. Indeed, the evidence shows that even during these lean years of federal intervention several indicators of environmental quality at the state level continued to improve.

Anne Alexander , Ralph d'Arge , John A List, Michael Margolis

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 6

The goal of this paper is to provide an investigation of several approaches to valuing ecosystem services and to contribute additional techniques which may be used in evaluating 'green' GDP accounts. Our estimates focus on the ecosystem as a productive economic input, not a stock which is depreciated or depleted over time; as such, it differs with other concepts more frequently employed in green GDP accounting. Most of our results are derived from the analytical fiction that a single owner of the biosphere establishes a market for all ecological resources. This monopolist then appropriates all rents from the human population. The maximum amount the monopolist charges is first assumed to be world gross product less the global human subsistence level. In addition, we examine the excess rents available in factor markets using the assumption of weak complementarity between factor inputs and ecosystem services. We also provide more conservative estimates of the value of ecosystem services by investigating the sustainable price the monopolist could charge the global population and by exploring the effects of compensating wage differentials and a non-monopolist owner of the ecosystem.

Tim Jeppesen, John A List, Daan van Soest

Cited by*: 5 Downloads*: 6

Empirical tests of the relationship between international competitiveness and the severity of environmental regulations are hampered by the lack of pollution abatement cost data for non-U.S. countries. The theory of the firm suggests that environmental stringency can be measured by the difference between a polluting input's shadow price and its market price. We make a first attempt at quantifying such a measure for two industries located in nine European OECD countries. Overall, we provide (i) a new approach to measure cross-country regulatory differences in that we use a theoretically attractive measure of industry-specific private compliance cost, and (ii) empirical estimates that are an attractive tool for researchers and policymakers who are interested in examining how economic activity is influenced by compliance costs.

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.

Christopher Mann

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 5

The survey methodology literature has debated whether advance letters to potential survey respondents will reduce nonresponse bias and thereby improve the accuracy of preelection forecasts. This research note analyzes the results of experiments conducted in Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania in which advance letters were sent to a random sample of potential survey respondents to 2002 preelection surveys. We find a significant increase in the overall response rate, although notably less than in past studies. However, the advance letters did not improve the representativeness of survey respondents or the accuracy of the election forecasts.

John A List, Yana Peysakhovichc

Cited by*: 1 Downloads*: 5

This paper examines aggregate time series data on individual charitable donations from 1968 to 2007. We find that changes in individual giving show an asymmetric response to changes in the S&P 500: individuals are more responsive to stock market upturns than downturns.

John A List, David Lucking-Reiley

Cited by*: 40 Downloads*: 5

No abstract available

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.

Ryan D Friedrichs, David C King, David W Nickerson

Cited by*: 0 Downloads*: 5

Recent large-scale field experiments of get out the vote (GOTV) drives have been non-partisan and may not accurately capture the effectiveness of partisan campaign outreach. In the 2002 Michigan gubernatorial election, a large field experiment across 14 state house districts evaluated the cost effectiveness of three mobilization technologies utilized by the Michigan Democratic Party's Youth Coordinated Campaign: door hangers, volunteer phone calls, and face-to-face visits. The results indicate that all three GOTV strategies possess similar cost-effectiveness.

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.