On negative time preferences

Survey data show that subjects positively discount both gains and losses but discount gains more heavily than losses. This holds for monetary and non-monetary outcomes. These results do not confirm the findings of two earlier studies about negative time preferences for non-monetary outcomes.     

Gender differences in lying

Aversion to lying has been consistently observed in sender-receiver games. Women have demonstrated greater aversion to lying for a small monetary benefit in these games than men. We test the robustness of this gender difference in a sender-receiver game with larger stakes. We find no difference in lying by gender.     

The disposition effect and loss aversion: Do gender differences matter?

This paper analyzes gender differences in the disposition effect in an experiment based on Weber and Camerer (1998). The results emphasize that female investors realize less capital losses, have significantly higher disposition effects and are more loss averse than men.     

Career concerns in a simple experimental labour market

We experimentally investigate a simple version of Holmström's career concerns model in which firms compete for agents in two consecutive periods. Profits of firms are determined by agents’ unknown ability and the effort they choose. Before making second-period wage offers firms are informed about first-period profits. In a different treatment firms additionally learn the abilities of agents. Theory suggests high first-period equilibrium effort in the hidden ability treatment but no effort elsewhere. However, we find that effort tends to be higher in the revealed ability treatment and therefore conclude that transparency does not weaken, but strengthen career concerns incentives.     

Occupations and the evolution of gender differences in intergenerational socioeconomic mobility

This paper analyzes intergenerational mobility experiences of daughters and sons with respect to their fathers’ occupational status and documents changes in gender differences over time. While women have been in occupations with lower overall earnings potential, men are more likely to be in occupations characterized by long hours and low returns. The mobility gap in earnings has been closing and a mobility advantage with respect to education has been emerging.     

Experiments on unemployment benefit sanctions and job search behavior

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on unemployment benefit sanctions. The experimental set-up allows us to distinguish between the effect of benefit sanctions once they are imposed (the ex post effect) and the threat of getting a benefit sanction imposed (the ex ante effect). We find that both effects matter. Moreover, the ex ante effect turns out to be substantial and bigger than the ex post effect. Benefits sanctions stimulate the outflow from unemployment.     

Specific investments, holdup, and the outside option principle

According to the outside option principle the holdup problem can be solved when the non-investor has a binding outside option. The investor then becomes residual claimant, creating efficient investment incentives. This paper reports about an experiment designed to test this. We find that when the outside option is binding investment levels fall short of the efficient level, but holdup is less of a problem than predicted when the outside option is non-binding.     

AN EXPERIMENT ON CORRUPTION AND GENDER

A number of papers with field data have found differences in the corrupt activities of males and females; nonetheless they have drawbacks that may be overcome in a laboratory experiment. The aim of this paper is to see experimentally whether women and men, facing the same situation behave in a different way, as suggested in the field‐data studies or, on the contrary, whether they behave in the same way. The results found in the experiment show that women are indeed less corrupt than men.     

On the Competition of Asymmetric Agents

Abstract. Rank-order tournaments are usually implemented in organizations to provide incentives for eliciting employees' effort and/or to identify the agent with the higher ability, for example in promotion tournaments. We close a gap in the literature by experimentally analyzing a ceteris paribus variation of the prize spread – being the major design feature of tournaments – in a symmetric and an asymmetric setting. We find that effort significantly increases with the prize spread as predicted by standard theory. However, only for sufficiently large prize spreads weak players competing against strong players strain themselves all the more and sorting of agents is feasible.     

Decision time and steps of reasoning in a competitive market entry game

Entry decisions in market entry games usually depend on the belief about how many others are entering the market, the belief about the own rank in a real effort task, and subjects’ risk preferences. In this paper I am able to replicate these basic results and examine two further dimensions: (i) the level of strategic sophistication, which has a positive impact on entry decisions, and (ii) the impact of time pressure, which has a (partly) negative influence on entry rates. Furthermore, when ranks are determined using a real effort task, differences in entry rates are explainable by higher competitiveness of males. Additionally, I show that individual characteristics are more important for the entry decision in more competitive environments.     

Wage transparency and performance: A real-effort experiment

Without transparency about peer wages in a real effort experiment, a change of wages does not affect performance. With transparency, however, higher paid workers tend to work more accurately, and lower paid workers shirk more under piece rates.     

Respect and relational contracts

Assuming that people care not only about what others do but also on what others think, we study respect in a labor market context where the length of the employment relationship is endogenous. In our three-stage gift-exchange experiment, the employer can express respect by giving the employee costly symbolic rewards after observing his level of effort. We study whether symbolic rewards are used by the employers mainly to praise employees or as a coordination device to build relational contracts by manipulating the balance between labor demand and supply in the market. We find that a high proportion of long-term relationships have been initiated by the assignment of symbolic rewards. However, the assignment of symbolic rewards decreases when it becomes clear that the relationship is durable, suggesting that employers mainly use symbolic rewards as a coordination device to initiate relational contracts. Compared to the balanced market condition, assigning symbolic rewards in initial relationships is less likely when there is excess demand in the market and more likely when there is excess supply, i.e., when the relationship is more valuable. Receiving symbolic rewards increases the employees’ likelihood of accepting to continue the relationship with the same employer. It also motivates them to increase their effort further but only when the market is balanced. Overall, the ability to assign symbolic rewards does not give rise to higher profits because it is associated with lower rents offered to the employees on average, leading to lower effort levels.     

An experimental study on individual choice, social welfare, and social preferences

We experimentally study subjects’ compliance with dominance relationships of income distributions in a ranking task. The experiment consisted of four different treatments: Lottery, individual choice, social preferences, and social planner. Our results suggest that people's risk attitudes do not adequately reflect their inequality attitudes. Uninvolved social planners exhibit randomization preferences, while self-interested social planners are generally more inequality averse and try to avoid extreme outcomes.     

Consumption externalities, production externalities, and efficient capital accumulation under time non-separable preferences

The effects of consumption and production externalities on economic performance under time non-separable preferences are examined both theoretically and numerically. We show that a consumption externality alone has long-run distortionary effects if and only if labor is supplied elastically. With fixed labor supply, it has only transitional distortionary effects. Production externalities always generate long-run distortions, irrespective of labor supply. The optimal tax structure to correct for the distortions is characterized. We compare the implications of this model with those obtained when the consumption externality is contemporaneous. While some of the long-run effects are robust, there are also important qualitative and quantitative differences, particularly along transitional paths.     

Demographic trends and international capital flows in an integrated world

This paper examines the impact of projected demographic trends on international capital flows. The analysis builds upon a ten-region overlapping generations' model of the world economy where capital is mobile across regions. Results show that, over the first half of the century, emerging regions will finance the demand of capital coming from the developed world where population aging is relatively advanced. In particular, the findings suggest that in the coming decades China will be the world's main creditor region. However, in the second half of the century, India will take over this leading position because of the predicted decline in the Chinese labor force. An additional analysis demonstrates that the economic consequences of demographic changes depend on the degree of capital market integration between regions.     

On the role of social wage comparisons in gift-exchange experiments

This study extends a bilateral gift-exchange experiment by Clark et al. (2010). We investigate how the provision of either quantitative or qualitative information on the average wage paid in all worker-employer relationships impacts the wage set by employers and worker performance. We find that information on the average wage reduces (increases) both wage offers and effort levels in one-shot (repeated) relationships.     

Interdependent preferences and segregating equilibria

This paper shows that models where preferences of individuals depend not only on their allocations, but also on the well being of other persons, can produce both large and testable effects. We study the allocation of workers with heterogeneous productivities to firms. We show that even small deviations from purely “selfish” preferences leads to widespread workplace skill segregation. That is, workers of different abilities tend to work in different firms, as long as they care somewhat more about the utilities of workers who are “close”. This result holds for a broad class and distribution of social preferences.     

Gender difference in the impact of retirement on cognitive abilities: Evidence from urban China

This paper examines the impact of retirement on cognitive functioning by gender in urban China and investigates the underlying mechanisms. Based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, the paper uses the mandatory retirement ages and different policy enforcement between the public and private sectors as instruments for retirement status. The analysis finds substantial gender heterogeneity in the effect of retirement on cognition, with a positive and significant effect for males, but a negative and less significant effect for females. The beneficial effects on cognition are stronger for male blue-collar workers, who are likely to pursue a more active lifestyle at retirement. Further investigation shows that the results are partly driven by differential behavioral changes at retirement, and the gender difference in retirement ages may also play a potential role.     

Elderly labor supply and fertility decisions in aging-population economies

With a longer life expectancy, individuals who plan to work when they are old may increase the number of their children. Therefore, when individuals choose the time of retirement, the fertility rate may not necessarily decline but even rise.