Tax morale affects tax compliance: Evidence from surveys and an artefactual field experiment

Our working hypothesis is that cross-cultural differences in tax compliance behavior have foundations in the institutions of tax administration and citizen assessment of the quality of governance. Tax compliance being a complex behavioral issue, its investigation requires use of a variety of methods and data sources. Results from artefactual field experiments conducted in countries with substantially different political histories and records of governance quality demonstrate that observed differences in tax compliance levels persist over alternative levels of enforcement. The experimental results are shown to be robust by replicating them for the same countries using survey response measures of tax compliance.     

Gift giving and worker productivity: Evidence from a firm-level experiment

We present results from a field experiment, designed to measure worker response to a monetary gift from their employer. The experiment took place inside a tree-planting firm paying its workforce incentive contracts. Firm managers told a crew of tree planters they would receive a pay raise for one day as a result of a surplus not attributable to past planting productivity. We compare planter productivity—the number of trees planted per day—on the day the gift was handed out with productivity on previous and subsequent days of planting on the same block, and thus under similar planting conditions. We find direct evidence that the gift had a significant and positive effect on daily planter productivity, controlling for planter-fixed effects, weather conditions and other random daily shocks.     

Does an economic incentive affect provider behavior? Evidence from a field experiment on different payment mechanisms

Aims: This study analyzed discrepancies in the quantity of medical services supplied by physicians under different payment systems for patients with different health statuses and illnesses by means of a field experiment.

Methods: Based on the laboratory experiment of Heike Hennig-Schmidt, we designed a field experiment to examine fee-for-service (FFS), capitation (CAP), and diagnosis-related group (DRG) payment systems. Medical students were replaced with 220 physicians as experimental subjects, which more closely reflected the clinical choices made by physicians in the real world. Under the three payment mechanisms, the quantity of medical services provided by physicians when they treated patients with different health statuses and illnesses were collected. Finally, relevant statistics were computed and analyzed.

Results: It was found that payment systems (sig. = 0.000) and patient health status (sig. = 0.000) had a stronger effect on physicians’ choices regarding quantity of medical services than illness types (sig. = 0.793). Additionally, under the FFS and CAP payment systems, physicians overserved patients in good and intermediate health while underserving patients in bad health. Under the DRG payment system, physicians overserved patients in good health and underserved patients in intermediate and bad health. Correspondingly, under FFS and CAP, the proportional loss of benefits was the highest for patients in bad health and the lowest for patients in good and intermediate health; while under DRGs, patients in good and intermediate health had the largest and smallest loss of benefits, respectively.

Limitations: In order to increase external effects of experiment results, we used the field experiment to replace laboratory experiment. However, the external effects still existed because of the blurring and abstraction of the parameters.

Conclusions: Medical treatment cost and price affected the quantity of medical services provided by physicians. Therefore, we proposed that a mix of payment systems could address the common interests of physicians and patients, as well as influence incentives from payment systems.     

Identifying significant characteristics of organic milk consumers: a CART analysis of an artefactual field experiment

The organic dairy category is one of the fastest growing categories of organic foods in the US. Organic milk consumers generally cite perceived health benefits and lower risk of food contamination, as well as perceived superior quality and environmental sustainability of organic farming methods, as the major motivations for preference of organic over conventional milk. While the attributes of organic milk that are valued by consumers are fairly well-known, more ambiguity exists regarding the demographic characteristics of the typical organic milk consumer. This research makes use of experimental data from 148 adult participants and use a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis, a nonparametric modelling approach, to identify how Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for organic milk varies with the demographic profile of experiment participants. The study finds that perceived taste of organic milk, concern for the risk of consuming conventional milk, being a primary shopper, and the quantity of milk consumed are the major factors that separate experiment participants into groups with high and low WTP for organic milk.     

File sharing as conditional cooperation: evidence from a framed field experiment

In this project, we investigate downloading and sharing behaviour in a novel ‘piracy game’ modelled after standard public good games. We find that willingness to share correlates positively with the sharing by others. By contrast, actual behaviour in the ‘piracy game’ is not correlated with self-reported behaviour.     

Prudence and prevention: an economic laboratory experiment

In an economic laboratory experiment, we study the relationship between prudence and prevention in general decision situations. Previous theoretical research on this relationship posits a negative impact of prudence on the optimal level of prevention. Overall, we find both risk-averse and prudent behaviour among our subjects. Moreover, prudent subjects chose significantly less prevention than nonprudent subjects, confirming the theoretical results of one-period models in the literature. Our findings might have implications for health policy if prudence – rather than irrational decision behaviour, as previously assumed – is responsible for low levels of preventive effort.     

Hidden benefits of reward: A field experiment on motivation and monetary incentives

We conducted a field experiment in a controlled work environment to investigate the effect of motivational talk and its interaction with monetary incentives. We find that motivational talk improves performance only when accompanied by performance pay. Moreover, performance pay reduces performance unless it is accompanied by motivational talk. These effects also carry over to the quality of work. Performance pay alone leads to more mistakes. Adding motivational talk makes the difference. In treatments with performance pay, motivational talk increases output by about 20 percent and reduces the ratio of mistakes by more than 40 percent.     

Enjoy the silence: an experiment on truth-telling

We analyze experimentally two sender–receiver games with conflictive preferences. In the first game, the sender can choose to tell the truth, to lie, or to remain silent. The latter strategy is costly. In the second game, the receiver must decide additionally whether or not to costly punish the sender after having observed the history of the game. We investigate the existence of two kinds of social preferences: lying aversion and preference for truth-telling. In the first game, senders tell the truth more often than predicted by the sequential equilibrium analysis, they remain silent frequently, and there exists a positive correlation between the probability of being truthful and the probability of remaining silent. Our main experimental result for the extended game shows that those subjects who punish the sender with a high probability after being deceived are precisely those who send fewer but more truthful messages. Finally, we solve for the Perfect Bayesian Nash Equilibria of a reduced form of the baseline game with two types of senders. The equilibrium predictions obtained suggest that the observed excessive truth-telling in the baseline game can be explained by lying aversion but not by a preference for truth-telling.

---

Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Financial support through the Ramón y Cajal program of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science is gratefully acknowledged. This work was initiated while the author was working at Maastricht University.     

Subsidizing charitable contributions: a natural field experiment comparing matching and rebate subsidies

We report the results of a field experiment conducted in conjunction with a mailed fundraising campaign of a nonprofit organization. The experiment is designed to compare the response of donors to subsidies in the form of matching amounts or rebated amounts. Matching subsidies are used by many corporations as an employee benefit; the US federal tax system encourages giving using a rebate subsidy by making donations tax deductible. The design includes a control group and two levels of subsidy of each type. Our main result is that matching subsidies result in larger total donations to charities than rebate subsidies, a result that is qualitatively similar to the lab findings. The estimated price elasticities for the matching subsidy are very similar to (and insignificantly different from) the lab experiments, while rebate subsidies lead to lower contributions in the field than in the lab. Since rebates in the field involve substantial lags and additional complications as compared with the “instant rebates” of the lab, this latter difference is not unexpected. The matching results are an important step in validating lab estimates of responsiveness to subsidies of charitable giving.

---

Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.      

Moving from the lab to the field: Exploring scrutiny and duration effects in lab experiments

The most important issue facing experimental economists is the generalizability of lab results. This letter examines more than 1200 doctor/patient consultations, in which scrutiny and duration of treatment were varied. We show that scrutiny has an important but short-lived effect.     

Reducing ambiguity in lotteries: evidence from a field experiment

Ambiguity about the chances of winning represents a key aspect in lotteries. By means of a controlled field experiment, we exogenously vary the degree of ambiguity about the winning chances of lotteries organized to incentivize the contribution for a public good. In one treatment, people have been simply informed about the maximum number of potential participants (i.e. the number of lottery tickets released). In a second treatment, this information has been omitted as in all traditional lotteries. Our general finding shows that simply reducing the degree of ambiguity of the lottery leads to a sizable and significant increase (67%) in the participation rate. This result is robust to alternative prize configurations.     

When financial work incentives pay for themselves: evidence from a randomized social experiment for welfare recipients

This paper summarizes early findings from a social experiment that provided financial incentives for new welfare recipients to leave welfare and work full time. The financial incentive was essentially a negative income tax with a requirement that people work at least 30 h/week. Early results show that the financial incentive increased full-time employment, earnings, and income, and reduced poverty. Furthermore, at the end of the period discussed in this paper, the program was paying for itself through increased tax revenues.     

The response to incentives and contractual efficiency: Evidence from a field experiment

We use data from a field experiment to estimate worker reaction to incentives and the optimality of piece-rate contracts. Our estimate of the elasticity of output with respect to piece rates is 0.39. Regression methods cannot predict performance under hypothetical contracts. Therefore, we apply structural econometric methods (without imposing profit maximization) to evaluate observed-contract optimality. Using profit as a metric, we estimate the distance between observed and profit-maximizing contracts to be negligible. This suggests that observed contracts closely approximate optimal contracts under asymmetric information about worker ability. Under complete information, the firm could increase expected profits by 14 percent keeping workers indifferent to the observed piece-rate contract. Profits could increase between 44 and 49 percent if the firm exploited information about ability to reduce worker utility to the outside alternative.     

Effects of supervision on tax compliance: Evidence from a field experiment in Austria

We conduct a field experiment on tax compliance, focusing on newly founded firms. As a novelty the effect of tax authorities’ supervision on timely tax payments is examined. Interestingly, results show no positive overall effect of close supervision on tax compliance.     

Social interaction and children's academic test scores: Evidence from the National Child Development Study

We explore the relationship between educational attainment and social interaction using individual level data from the British National Child Development Study. To be specific, we analyze whether an intergenerational aspect to this relationship exists by examining the relationship between the educational attainment of children and the degree of formal social activity undertaken by their parents. Our results suggest that children's scores in reading, mathematics and vocabulary tests are positively associated with the extent of their parents’ formal social interaction, and this relationship is robust to alternative definitions of social interaction.     

Industrial Ownership and Environmental Performance: Evidence from China

This study explores the differences in pollution control performance of industries with different types of ownership – State owned (SOE), collectively or community owned (COE), and privately owned (POE). A theoretic analysis is conducted and followed by an empirical assessment with Chinese data. The empirical results show that the COEs in China have better environmental performances in water pollution discharges than the SOEs and the POEs, suggesting that COEs may internalize environmental externalities.      

Upstream-downstream transactions and watershed externalities: Experimental evidence from Kenya

Where environmental policies or projects seek behavioral change, understanding underlying norms and preferences is essential to securing environmental outcomes. This study models a payment for environmental services intervention in an experimental field laboratory in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Upstream and downstream individuals are paired in a standard investment game, in which the upstream mover's investment represents land use decisions and the downstream mover responds with a choice of compensation payment. The experimental intervention introduces an enforcement treatment on the downstream movers' compensation decisions for a single round. Underlying social preferences and identity appear to shape individual transactions between upstream and downstream individuals. Upstream first movers are sensitive to the removal of the enforcement on their downstream partners in the second round, and make decisions consistent with crowding out of social preferences. The results suggest that environmental interventions may affect resource decisions for individuals who are not themselves direct targets of enforcement.     

公司经营者物质报酬、政治激励与经营绩效——基于国有控股上市公司的实证分析

本文选取中国国有上市公司为研究对象,重点研究国有上市公司经营者激励与公司绩效的相关性,并研究经营者升迁的决定因素对公司绩效的敏感性。研究发现在国有控股的企业中,董事长更多的关注政治激励,总经理更多的关心物质激励,当存在晋升机会时,政治激励、物质激励有一定的替代关系;年轻管理者的对公司绩效的作用往往主观地被低估,任期、政治关联、学历同晋升机会、公司绩效显著正相关,这意味着,上级对高级管理人员经营能力的判断时,应剔除高级管理人员个人特性对公司绩效的影响。     

Context matters to explain field experiments: Results from Colombian and Thai fishing villages

During the last decade, field experiments regarding the study of common pool resource governance have been performed that replicated earlier findings of laboratory experiments. One of the questions is how the decisions made by participants in rural communities are influenced by their experience. This paper presents the results of field experiments in Colombia and Thailand on fishery resources. Context information is derived from the communities via in-depth interviews, surveys and role playing exercises. The use of different methodological tools allowed to link decisions in field experiments with contextual variables for two fishery villages. Explanation of core variables in social dilemmas is given, the degree of cooperation levels, preferred rules, rule compliance and enforcement. Main findings include: i) fishermen made decisions in the field experiments that reflected their own experience and context, ii) agreements for rule crafting are possible only under specific conditions that guarantees livelihoods and sustainability, iii) the broader context determines cooperation levels at a local level, iv) inequalities in the sanctioning of rule breakers decrease the possibilities of reaching cooperation agreements, and v) high levels of trust among local fishermen is not a sufficient condition for resource sustainability, when trust in external rule makers and enforcers is low.