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Abstract:
Are men more willing to take financial risks than women? The answer to this important question is not clear from the existing literature. We propose a novel approach to this issue, in which we both assemble the data from many experiments with thousands of participants in a simple investment game, and also conduct our own experiments. The previous experiments were not designed to investigate a gender difference and were conducted by different researchers in different countries, with different instructions, durations, payments, subject pools, etc. We find a very consistent result that women invest less, and thus appear to be more risk averse than men in their financial investments.

Financial risk, gender differences, experiment, risk attitudes

Abstract:
We study the following basic intuition: when faced with a decision how to split their investment between a risky lottery and an asset with a fixed return, people increase the proportion invested in the risky option the more they like the lottery. We find counter-examples to this, and in fact we find no simple relation between preferences between lotteries and the fraction invested in them. We use three well-documented biases (ambiguity aversion, the illusion of control and myopic loss aversion) to show this. First we replicate the previous results in a laboratory experiment with financial incentives, and then test whether participants are willing to explicitly pay a small sum of money in line with the bias (pay for less ambiguity, more perceived control, or more frequent information about portfolio performance). We then study how portfolio choice depends on these biases.

With the parameters chosen, the illusion of control was eliminated when participants were asked to pay to gain more control, and the bias did not affect investment behavior (i.e., participants invested in a risky option the same fraction when faced with more or less control). In the ambiguity treatment, people were willing to pay for less ambiguity, but again the level of ambiguity did not influence investment. Finally, in the myopic loss aversion treatment participants were willing to pay money to have more freedom to choose, even though (in line with the documented bias) they invested less when having more freedom to change their investment.

Ambiguity aversion, behavioral finance, illusion of control, lotteries, myopic loss aversion, portfolio choice, risk attitudes

Abstract:
Can incentives be effective when trying to encourage the development of good habits? We investigate the effect of paying people a non-trivial amount of money to attend an exercise facility over a period of time. We find that doing so leads to an attendance level that is twice as high as the level when people have not been paid, even well after the end of the intervention. This result is driven primarily by the impact on non-users (people who did not previously attend the gym), as regular users are essentially unaffected. We observe no difference across gender. Even though personal incentives to exercise are already in place, it appears that the financial incentive serves as a catalyst to get some people past the threshold of actually getting started with an exercise regimen. We argue that there is scope for financial intervention in habit formation, particularly in the area of health.

Intrinsic incentives, extrinsic incentives, habits, exercise, crowding-out, motivation, health

Abstract:
The standard procedure in experimental economics maintains anonymity among participants. Yet, many field interactions are conducted with neither complete anonymity nor complete familiarity. How will people respond to varying degrees of anonymity and social distance? We consider the effect of one form of social distance, by comparing the standard procedure of playing dictator and ultimatum games with the same games played by participants who knew the family name of their counterparts. When names were revealed, dictators allocated significantly more. However, this information had little effect on ultimatum game offers; strategic considerations seem to crowd out impulses toward generosity or charity.

Altruism, Experiment, Generosity, Names, Social Distance

Abstract:
We report an experiment on the effect of intergroup competition on group coordination in the minimal-effort game (Van Huyck et al., 1990). The competition was between two 7-person groups. Each player in each group independently chose an integer from 1 to 7. The group with the higher minimum won the competition and each of its members was paid according to the game?s original payoff matrix. Members of the losing group were paid nothing. In case of a tie, each player was paid half the payoff in the original matrix. This treatment was contrasted with two control treatments where each of the two groups played an independent coordination game, either with or without information about the minimum chosen by the outgroup. Although the intergroup competition does not change the set of strict equilibria, we found that it improved collective rationality by moving group members in the direction of higher-payoff equilibria. Merely providing group members with information about the minimal-effort level in the other group was not sufficient to generate this effect.

Abstract:
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.

Abstract:
When agents are ascribed selfish motives, economic theory points to grave inefficiencies resulting from externalities. We study a restaurant setting in which groups of diners are faced with different ways of paying the bill. The two main manipulations are splitting the bill between the diners and having each pay individually. We find that subjects consume more when the cost is split, resulting in a substantial loss of efficiency. Diners prefer the individual pay to the inefficient split-bill method. When forced to play according to a less preferred set of rules, they minimize their individual losses by taking advantage of others.

Abstract:
The Paper considers two categories of discrimination: 'discrimination against' and 'discrimination in favour', which Becker coins 'nepotism'. The Paper develops an experimental test to distinguish between these two types of discrimination. The experiment compares the behaviour towards individuals of different groups with the behaviour towards anonymous individuals (those having no clear group affiliation). We illustrate the two attitudes by considering two segmented societies: Belgian society, with its linguistic segmentation between the Flemish and the Walloons, and Israeli society, where we focus on religious versus secular segmentation. In Belgium, we find evidence of discrimination against. Both the Walloons and the Flemish treat people of their own group in the same way as anonymous individuals while discriminating against individuals of the other group. In contrast, the behaviour of ultra orthodox religious Jews in Israel can be categorized as nepotism: they favour members of their own group while treating anonymous individuals in the same way as secular individuals. The distinction between the different types of discrimination is important in evaluating the effectiveness and the efficiency consequences of anti-discriminatory legislations.

Discrimination, nepotism, efficiency, anonymity

Abstract:
Recent discoveries in behavioral economics have led scholars to question the underpinnings of neoclassical economics. We use insights gained from one of the most influential lines of behavioral research -- gift exchange -- in an attempt to maximize worker effort in two quite distinct tasks: data entry for a university library and door-to-door fundraising for a research center. In support of the received literature, our field evidence suggests that worker effort in the first few hours on the job is considerably higher in the gift treatment than in the non-gift treatment. After the initial few hours, however, no difference in outcomes is observed, and overall the gift treatment yielded inferior aggregate outcomes for the employer: with the same budget we would have logged more data for our library and raised more money for our research center by using the market-clearing wage rather than by trying to induce greater effort with a gift of higher wages.

Abstract:
Models of inequity aversion and fairness have dominated the behavioural economics landscape in the last decade. This study gathers data from 240 subjects exposed to variants of two of the major experimental games - dictator and trust - that are employed to provide important empirical content to these models. With a set of simple laboratory treatments that focus on a manipulation of an important feature of real markets, competition over resources, we show that extant behavioural models are unable to explain data drawn from realistic manipulations of either game. Our empirical results highlight that if placed in an environment wherein socially acceptable actions provide one person with a greater portion of the rents, people will put forth extra effort to secure those rents, to the detriment of the other player. In this manner, when one can earn more than the other player through actions deemed customary, people reveal a preference for equity aversion, not inequity aversion. We propose an alternative modelling approach that can explain these data as well as accommodate other major data patterns observed in the experimental literature.

Equity Aversion, Social Preferences, Social Status

Abstract:
Workers in a wide variety of jobs are paid based on performance, which is commonly seen as enhancing effort and productivity relative to non-contingent pay schemes. However, psychological research suggests that excessive rewards can, in some cases, result in a decline in performance. To test whether very high monetary rewards can decrease performance, we conducted a set of experiments in the U.S. and in India in which subjects worked on different tasks and received performance-contingent payments that varied in amount from small to very large relative to their typical levels of pay. With some important exceptions, very high reward levels had a detrimental effect on performance.

Abstract:
A taboo is an unthinkable action, that is, even the thought of violating it triggers social punishment. Taboos are the social thought police, discouraging individuals from considering certain type of actions. We consider a simple model in which taboos are part of the definition of one's identity. Deliberating over breaking the taboo adds the action to the individual's choice set and provides information on possible private benefits but is costly because it contradicts one's identity. The strength of the taboo is endogenously determined by the number of individuals that obey it without any consideration of its violation. We model stable taboos and examine how they can change and disappear over time as a result of changes in the distribution of private benefits gained from its violation. We assume that individuals are heterogeneous with respect to their attitudes towards social punishment. We then analyze the relationship between social heterogeneity and the strength as well as effectiveness of taboos, i.e., are taboos stronger in homogenous or heterogeneous societies? We extend our analysis and examine societies in which individuals may choose among several identities, characterized by different taboos or varying strengths of taboos. Having such a choice defines an evolutionary process with respect to identity: Some identities disappear while others flourish. We examine the characterization and the conditions giving rise to a multi-identity society.

Identity, Social Norms, Taboos

Abstract:
We test whether the frequency of feedback information about the performance of an investment portfolio and the flexibility with which the investor can change the portfolio influence her risk attitude in markets. In line with the prediction of myopic loss aversion (Benartzi and Thaler (1995)), we find that more information and more flexibility result in less risk taking. Market prices of risky assets are significantly higher if feedback frequency and decision flexibility are reduced. This result supports the findings from individual decision making, and shows that market interactions do not eliminate such behavior or its consequences for prices.

Abstract:
This paper proposes an experimental approach to studying different aspects of discrimination. We let participants play various games with opponents of distinct ethnic affiliation. Strategies based upon such ethnic affiliation provide direct evidence of ethnic discrimination. This approach was utilized to study ethnic discrimination in Israeli Jewish society. Using the "trust game," we detected a systematic mistrust toward men of Eastern origin. A "dictator game" experiment indicated that this discrimination was due to (mistaken) ethnic stereotypes and not to a "taste for discrimination." The "ultimatum game" enabled us to trace another ethnic stereotype that reversed the discrimination's direction. One of the surprising results is that this ethnic discrimination is an entirely male phenomenon.

Abstract:
We examine the effects of strategic delegation in a simple ultimatum game experiment. Specifically, we show that when the proposer uses a delegate, his share increases. Since in such a case the proposer does not use the delegate as a commitment device, this effect identifies an additional explanation of the delegation phenomenon. This result holds when delegation is mandatory or optional. We also show that unobserved delegation by the responder reduces his share as his delegate is perceived to be more willing to accept tough offers.

Abstract:
The deterrence hypothesis predicts that the introduction of a penalty that leaves everything else unchanged will reduce the occurrence of the behavior subject to the fine. We present the result of a field study in a group of day-care centers that contradicts this prediction. Parents used to arrive late to collect their children, forcing a teacher to stay after closing time. We introduced a monetary fine for late-coming parents. As a result the number of late-coming parents increased significantly. After the fine was removed no reduction occurred. We argue that penalties are usually introduced into an incomplete contract, social or private. They may change the information that agents have and therefore the effect on behavior may be opposite than expected. If this is true, the deterrence hypothesis loses its predictive strength, since the clause 'everything else is left unchanged' might be hard to satisfy.

Abstract:
Economics seems largely based on the assumption that monetary incentives improve performance. By contrast, a large literature in psychology, including a rich tradition of experimental work, claims just the opposite. In this paper we present and discuss a set of experiments designed to test the effect of different monetary compensations on performance. In our experiments we find that whenever money is offered, a larger amount yields a higher performance. It is not true, however, that offering money always induces a higher performance: participants who were offered a small payoff gave a worse performance than those who were offered no compensation at all. These results suggest that the behavior of participants is influenced by their perception of the contract that is offered to them. When the contract offers money the environment is perceived as monetary, and participants respond in a qualitatively different way in monetary and non-monetary environments. In a different set of experiments we test subjects who, acting as principals, have to provide the appropriate incentive to agents. We show that principals do not anticipate the drastic difference in behavior. The vast majority of principals seem to think incorrectly that a larger compensation is unambiguously a better incentive.