•We study the Ultimatum Game with proposers either earning their role or not.•An entitlement effect – proposers earning the role being less generous – is believed to exist.•We conduct three ...experiments with 1,254 participants.•The entitlement effect fails to replicate in all three experiments, and in the pooled data.
Since the seminal paper of Hoffman et al. (1994), an entitlement effect is believed to exist in the Ultimatum Game, in the sense that proposers who have earned their role (as opposed to having it randomly allocated) offer a smaller share of the pie to their matched responder. The entitlement effect is at the core of experimental Public Choice – not just because it concerns the topics of bargaining and negotiations, but also because it relates to the question about under which circumstances actors behave more rational. We conduct three experiments, two in the laboratory and one online, with more than 1,250 participants. Our original motivation was to study gender differences, but ultimately we could not replicate the entitlement effect in the Ultimatum Game in any of our three experiments. Potential reasons for why the replication attempts fail are discussed.
Competitiveness and Employability Demiral, Elif E.; Mollerstrom, Johanna
Journal of behavioral and experimental economics,
06/2024, Letnik:
110
Journal Article
Recenzirano
•We study how signaling varying competition preferences affects employability.•Non-competitive candidates risk being perceived as less productive.•Signaling a willingness to compete with others may ...seem less socially adept.•Displaying a desire to self-compete boosts productivity and socil skill views.•The results hold both for female and male job candidates.
We investigate the impact on employability when job candidates signal different personal tastes for competitions. In three experiments, with close to 3,000 participants in total, we show that non-competitive candidates risk being perceived as less productive, while those who signal a willingness to compete with others may be perceived as less socially skilled. However, displaying a willingness to self-compete, i.e. to challenge oneself to improve over time, seems to increase the likelihood of being perceived as both productive and socially skilled, for both female and male job candidates.
We report on two experiments investigating whether there is a gender difference in the willingness to compete against oneself (self-competition), similar to what is found when competing against ...others (other-competition). In one laboratory and one online market experiment, involving a total of 1,200 participants, we replicate the gender-gap in willingness to other-compete but find no evidence of a gender difference in the willingness to self-compete. We explore the roles of risk and confidence and suggest that these factors can account for the different findings. Finally, we document that self-competition does no worse than other-competition in terms of performance boosting.
We study the willingness to compete against self and others in an experiment with over 650 participants, using a modified version of the Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) design. We show that ...introducing a possibility to self-compete, in addition to the standard other-competition option, increases the proportion of participants who compete by more than 60 percent, indicating that self-competition attracts many of those who would otherwise have stayed out of competitions altogether. This holds for both men and women. Moreover, men and women prefer self-competitions to other-competitions, especially when they have to select one of the two types of competitions. We also document that self-competitions are perceived as more controllable than other-competitions.
•This work investigates the willingness to compete against self and others.•Adding the possibility to self-compete increases overall willingness to compete.•Both men and women prefer self to other-competition when they can choose between them.•Self-competitions are perceived as more controllable than other-competitions.
Signaling confidence Demiral, Elif E.; Mollerstrom, Johanna
Journal of economic behavior & organization,
October 2024, Letnik:
226
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We study gender differences in confidence in an experimental hiring market, focusing on how signaling confidence affects the likelihood of being hired. We document that moderate (versus low) levels ...of confidence enhance the probability of being hired, while excessive confidence, characterized by high performance estimates and high certainty, diminishes employment prospects. Men display greater levels of confidence than women, and this gender gap widens in forward-looking scenarios, where performance estimates are provided ex ante rather than ex post. These findings provide a cautionary reminder of the potential negative consequences of signaling excessive confidence. Hence, encouraging both men and women to signal performance predictions that are aligned with reality instead of simply advising women to be more confident may well be a safer way to foster equity in labor market outcomes.
•DEA models and KPIs evaluate the states’ eco-efficiency and eco-productivity.•The radial DEA models indicate that 70% of the states are operated efficiently.•The states have high capital efficiency ...and low energy and emission efficiencies.•Low CO2 emissions have a positive impact on eco-efficiency and eco-productivity.•Nuclear power and renewable energy consumption have significant contributions.
This study implements radial and non-radial Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models to assess eco-efficiency and eco-productivity of the 50 states in the United States in 2018. The models are based on three inputs (capital stock, employment, and energy consumption), a single desirable output (real gross domestic product) and a single undesirable output variable (CO2 emissions). The radial DEA models reveal that at least 32 states are operated efficiently. Five states perform at the most optimal scale size, whereas 17 states have considerable potential to boost their productive efficiencies by enlarging available resources, and 28 states are overinvested in their input variables given their current output levels. The non-radial DEA models show that, overall, the states’ capital efficiency is very high, whereas energy and emission efficiencies are very low. The states’ eco-productivity is relatively higher than the eco-efficiency levels. In the second stage of the analysis, non-parametric statistical tests and Tobit regressions are conducted for further investigation. According to the non-parametric statistical test, high capital stock, labor force, and energy usage do not affect the states’ productive efficiency. However, states with low carbon dioxide emissions have significantly higher eco-efficiency and eco-productivity levels. The Tobit regression results illustrate that nuclear power and renewable energy consumption significantly affect the states’ relative efficiencies.
Economic production is often accompanied by the depletion of natural resources and amplified environmental concerns. Mainstream economic models usually disregard such socio-environmental consequences ...of economic production. Therefore, there is more need of interdisciplinary methods to evaluate the sustainable productivity of nations. In this paper, we investigate the sustainable production growth of the 50 US states from 1997 to 2018. The US, as one of the largest economies and emitters of greenhouse gases, has a significant role to play in addressing the global environmental issues. The US has numerous national and international commitments and environmental policies in place, however the role of such policies on sustainable production has mostly been overlooked. We implement Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models based on several economic indicators and find that most states have been efficient between 1997 and 2018. We use Slack-Based Measures (SBM) to investigate individual states' capital, labor, energy, and emission performances. According to the results, capital efficiency is high while energy and emissions efficiency is low, which results in states' eco-productivity being greater than their eco-efficiency. This highlights that, while ensuring economic efficiency, many states compromise environmental focus. We further adopt Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) to evaluate the states' productivity, efficiency, and technological change over 22 years, and document significant adverse impact of the global financial crisis on economic efficiency. Next, we apply econometric models to evaluate the impact of renewable energy and energy efficiency policies on efficiency outcomes. The test results indicate that all policies positively affect the states’ average production efficiencies and KPI measures. Overall, the findings provide valuable insights into the sustainable production growth of the US states and the impact of renewable energy and energy efficiency policies on efficiency outcomes.
Does competition affect moral behavior? This fundamental question has been debated among leading scholars for centuries, and more recently, it has been tested in experimental studies yielding a body ...of rather inconclusive empirical evidence. A potential source of ambivalent empirical results on the same hypothesis is design heterogeneity—variation in true effect sizes across various reasonable experimental research protocols. To provide further evidence on whether competition affects moral behavior and to examine whether the generalizability of a single experimental study is jeopardized by design heterogeneity, we invited independent research teams to contribute experimental designs to a crowd-sourced project. In a large-scale online data collection, 18,123 experimental participants were randomly allocated to 45 randomly selected experimental designs out of 95 submitted designs. We find a small adverse effect of competition on moral behavior in a meta-analysis of the pooled data. The crowd-sourced design of our study allows for a clean identification and estimation of the variation in effect sizes above and beyond what could be expected due to sampling variance. We find substantial design heterogeneity—estimated to be about 1.6 times as large as the average standard error of effect size estimates of the 45 research designs—indicating that the informativeness and generalizability of results based on a single experimental design are limited. Drawing strong conclusions about the underlying hypotheses in the presence of substantive design heterogeneity requires moving toward much larger data collections on various experimental designs testing the same hypothesis.
This dissertation focuses on understanding some of the behavioral factors behind the gender differences in labor market outcomes, and makes suggestions about the design of policies that could reduce ...such gender differences. Chapter 1 investigates the impact on employability of signaling alternative personal tastes for competitions. We define three types of job candidates who vary in their competitive preferences: self-competitive, other-competitive, and non-competitive. Using three studies, we investigate whether the candidate’s competitive taste affects (perceptions about) their likelihood of being hired for a job. First, findings from Study 1 show that self-competitive candidates are most likely to be hired in an experimental hiring market. Second, to increase the likelihood of being hired, hypothetical candidates are overwhelmingly recommended by other participants to mention that they are self-competitive in a cover letter in Study 2. Third, candidates who express their taste for self-competition in their cover letters are regarded as more employable and more socially likable when compared to the other two types in Study 3. Additionally, other-competitive candidates are rated the least favorably in the social domains in Study 3 (i.e., they experience a backlash from being other-competitive). Self-competitive candidates, on the other hand, are believed to be the highest performers among all of the three types, but they receive no negative feedback for being competitive. The findings, therefore, suggest that self-competitiveness is potentially an advantageous channel to signal productivity while keeping the risk of backlash low. All of the findings hold for both male and female candidates. The second chapter also uses a total of three studies, and tests willingness to select into and preferences for other- and self-competitions. The first two studies replicate the well-documented gender differences in the willingness to compete against others, but report no evidence of a gender difference in the willingness to compete against one’s own previous performance. Results from Study 3 illustrate that both men and women prefer self-competitions to competitions against other individuals, especially when they are forced to compete but can choose how. Additionally, when self-competition is available as a compensation scheme choice along with other-competition and piece rate, more people choose to compete, which results in an increase in productivity. Moreover, we document that confidence, risk preferences, and causal attributions can explain why there exists a gender difference in willingness to compete against others but not against self.
Since the seminal paper of Hoffman et al. (1994), an entitlement effect is believed to exist in the Ultimatum Game, in the sense that proposers who have earned their role (as opposed to having it ...randomly allocated) offer a smaller share of the pie to their matched responder. The entitlement effect is at the core of experimental Public Choice – not just because it concerns the topics of bargaining and negotiations, but also because it relates to the question about under which circumstances actors behave more rational. We conduct three experiments, two in the laboratory and one online, with more than 1,250 participants. Our original motivation was to study gender differences, but ultimately we could not replicate the entitlement effect in the Ultimatum Game in any of our three experiments. Potential reasons for why the replication attempts fail are discussed.
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