In this study, I examine whether prior experience with control decisions produces asymmetry in how principals adjust their control over agents. Building on psychological theory, I predict that experience with exercising high control over agents reinforces a principal’s belief that agents are self-interested and that they should be controlled. In contrast, prior experience with exercising low control over agents does not reinforce a principal’s belief that agents are socially interested and that they should not be controlled. Accordingly, principals should be less willing to decrease their control over agents than they are to increase their control over agents. Results of my experiment support my prediction and showcase conditions under which the asymmetry disappears. Overall, my study suggests that extensive experience with exercising high levels of control over agents may cause principals to hold on to their control.
{"title":"Asymmetric Adjustment of Control","authors":"Victor van Pelt","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3507282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3507282","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, I examine whether prior experience with control decisions produces asymmetry in how principals adjust their control over agents. Building on psychological theory, I predict that experience with exercising high control over agents reinforces a principal’s belief that agents are self-interested and that they should be controlled. In contrast, prior experience with exercising low control over agents does not reinforce a principal’s belief that agents are socially interested and that they should not be controlled. Accordingly, principals should be less willing to decrease their control over agents than they are to increase their control over agents. Results of my experiment support my prediction and showcase conditions under which the asymmetry disappears. Overall, my study suggests that extensive experience with exercising high levels of control over agents may cause principals to hold on to their control.","PeriodicalId":290366,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral & Experimental Economics eJournal","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121832559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, we first provide a framework for history-dependent utility models. We further consider discrete infinite horizon dynamic optimization programs in which the instantaneous payoff presents such historydependence. Habits are a particular case of history-dependence. An issue about models with habits is their lack of general framework. Our framework allows to study habit models that are either additive or multiplicative or neither, as well as satiation models. Moreover, with this unified setting one can treat the usual optimal growth models with or without habit formation and with or without satiation effects. As the way the history dependence is formalized allows us to use dynamic programming tools. We show that the value function is the unique fixed point of the Bellman operator. Such history-dependent modelizations have their motivations and applications in many areas among which decision theory, psychology, behavioral and environmental economics.
{"title":"On History-Dependent Optimization Models: A Unified Framework to Analyze Models with Habits, Satiation and Optimal Growth","authors":"Lisa Morhaim, A. Ulus","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3892196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3892196","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we first provide a framework for history-dependent utility models. We further consider discrete infinite horizon dynamic optimization programs in which the instantaneous payoff presents such historydependence. Habits are a particular case of history-dependence. An issue about models with habits is their lack of general framework. Our framework allows to study habit models that are either additive or multiplicative or neither, as well as satiation models. Moreover, with this unified setting one can treat the usual optimal growth models with or without habit formation and with or without satiation effects. As the way the history dependence is formalized allows us to use dynamic programming tools. We show that the value function is the unique fixed point of the Bellman operator. Such history-dependent modelizations have their motivations and applications in many areas among which decision theory, psychology, behavioral and environmental economics.","PeriodicalId":290366,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral & Experimental Economics eJournal","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114590516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We test whether and, if so, how incentives to promote pro-social behavior affect the extent to which it spills over to subsequent charitable giving. To do so we conduct a two-period artefactual field experiment to study repeated donation decisions of more than 700 participants. We vary how participants’ first pro-social behavior s incentivized by a wide range of fundraising interventions ranging from soft to hard paternalism. Our design allows us to decompose spillover effects into a pure spillover effect, which identifies the impact of previous pro-social behavior on subsequent donation decisions and a crowding effect, which captures the extent to which the spillover effects are affected by the incentives exerted on the previous pro-social behavior. We find evidence for negative spillover effects. Participants donate less if they completed a pro-social task prior to the donation decision. Most importantly, we find that the spillover effects depend on how the initial pro-social behavior has been incentivized. Especially participants who are incentivized to donate through social comparisons are more willing to give to charity thereafter compared to participants whose initial pro-social behavior is incentivized by monetary rewards. The variations in spillover effects are driven by participants’ perceived external pressure in the first pro-social decision.
{"title":"Incentives and Intertemporal Behavioral Spillovers: A Two-Period Experiment on Charitable Giving","authors":"Marius Alt, Carlo Gallier","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3787930","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3787930","url":null,"abstract":"We test whether and, if so, how incentives to promote pro-social behavior affect the extent to which it spills over to subsequent charitable giving. To do so we conduct a two-period artefactual field experiment to study repeated donation decisions of more than 700 participants. We vary how participants’ first pro-social behavior s incentivized by a wide range of fundraising interventions ranging from soft to hard paternalism. Our design allows us to decompose spillover effects into a pure spillover effect, which identifies the impact of previous pro-social behavior on subsequent donation decisions and a crowding effect, which captures the extent to which the spillover effects are affected by the incentives exerted on the previous pro-social behavior. We find evidence for negative spillover effects. Participants donate less if they completed a pro-social task prior to the donation decision. Most importantly, we find that the spillover effects depend on how the initial pro-social behavior has been incentivized. Especially participants who are incentivized to donate through social comparisons are more willing to give to charity thereafter compared to participants whose initial pro-social behavior is incentivized by monetary rewards. The variations in spillover effects are driven by participants’ perceived external pressure in the first pro-social decision.","PeriodicalId":290366,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral & Experimental Economics eJournal","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121630874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As energy markets are becoming more decentralised, energy trading platforms are emerging as significant tools to facilitate the coordination of energy consumption and generation, encouraging the use of renewable energy. Focusing on a set of three different European countries, we disentangle the effectiveness of both economic and non-economic incentives in fostering energy trade via trading platforms. We use an incentivized survey experiment to collect data about consumers’ and prosumers’ willingness to participate in an energy trading platform. We find that the monetary incentive is not necessarily the main reason why people would choose to trade their energy, but other dimensions, such as environmental concerns, independence from the national grid, and having used the technology previously, play an important role.
{"title":"Would You Like to Trade Your Energy? A Comparative Survey Experiment on Energy Trading Platforms","authors":"S. Steadman, Anna Rita Bennato, M. Giulietti","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3951095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3951095","url":null,"abstract":"As energy markets are becoming more decentralised, energy trading platforms are emerging as significant tools to facilitate the coordination of energy consumption and generation, encouraging the use of renewable energy. Focusing on a set of three different European countries, we disentangle the effectiveness of both economic and non-economic incentives in fostering energy trade via trading platforms. We use an incentivized survey experiment to collect data about consumers’ and prosumers’ willingness to participate in an energy trading platform. We find that the monetary incentive is not necessarily the main reason why people would choose to trade their energy, but other dimensions, such as environmental concerns, independence from the national grid, and having used the technology previously, play an important role.","PeriodicalId":290366,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral & Experimental Economics eJournal","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124974006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This is an open source monograph about the economics of teams and the collection of intelligence in an espionage, counter-intelligence context. Our focus is decision-making, including search processes, under ambiguity or true uncertainty and the way that idiosyncratic human reactions to ambiguity affect team decision-making in intelligence agencies.
{"title":"Intelligence Sharing, Networks, Teams and Ambiguity: How Working Together Shapes Decision-Making Under Risk and Uncertainty","authors":"P. J. Phillips, Gabriela Pohl","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3705073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3705073","url":null,"abstract":"This is an open source monograph about the economics of teams and the collection of intelligence in an espionage, counter-intelligence context. Our focus is decision-making, including search processes, under ambiguity or true uncertainty and the way that idiosyncratic human reactions to ambiguity affect team decision-making in intelligence agencies.","PeriodicalId":290366,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral & Experimental Economics eJournal","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130406533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Previous experiences significantly influence subsequent behavior. However, little is known about how experiences from ambiguous situations shape decision makers' subsequent ambiguity attitudes. We investigate this experimentally in an investment task that involves assets characterized by ambiguous payoffs. We exogenously manipulate gain/loss experience. We find that prior gains made subjects more ambiguity seeking, more optimistic about future payoffs, and more likely to invest in the ambiguous asset compared with the no gain/loss condition. Prior losses, however, did not generate significant difference. This contributes to the understanding of both ambiguity attitudes and the role of experience.
{"title":"Losing Faith or Appetite? The Impact of Payoff Experiences on Ambiguity Attitudes, Beliefs, and Investment Choice","authors":"Peiran Jiao, Chen Li","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3945497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3945497","url":null,"abstract":"Previous experiences significantly influence subsequent behavior. However, little is known about how experiences from ambiguous situations shape decision makers' subsequent ambiguity attitudes. We investigate this experimentally in an investment task that involves assets characterized by ambiguous payoffs. We exogenously manipulate gain/loss experience. We find that prior gains made subjects more ambiguity seeking, more optimistic about future payoffs, and more likely to invest in the ambiguous asset compared with the no gain/loss condition. Prior losses, however, did not generate significant difference. This contributes to the understanding of both ambiguity attitudes and the role of experience.","PeriodicalId":290366,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral & Experimental Economics eJournal","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122491325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A person’s lived experience, including their culture and upbringing, affects their cognition. This affects how they perceive any given situation. We use differences in cultural norms regarding individualism to explain preference heterogeneity about power. Using matched employee- establishment data and an international index of individualism, we find causal evidence that inherited individualism increases the marginal satisfaction from workplace power/authority. To account for endogeneity, we instrument for authority using equivalent employees in a different but similar country. We also include establishment random effects, pay and other individual characteristics. A placebo test confirms the relationship is specific to power rather than general satisfaction.
{"title":"Power up: A Cognitive Explanation of Heterogeneity in Preferences for Power","authors":"Kieron J. Meagher, A. Wait","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3945351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3945351","url":null,"abstract":"A person’s lived experience, including their culture and upbringing, affects their cognition. This affects how they perceive any given situation. We use differences in cultural norms regarding individualism to explain preference heterogeneity about power. Using matched employee- establishment data and an international index of individualism, we find causal evidence that inherited individualism increases the marginal satisfaction from workplace power/authority. To account for endogeneity, we instrument for authority using equivalent employees in a different but similar country. We also include establishment random effects, pay and other individual characteristics. A placebo test confirms the relationship is specific to power rather than general satisfaction.","PeriodicalId":290366,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral & Experimental Economics eJournal","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128425514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many economic decisions, such as whether to invest in developing new skills, change professions, or purchase a new technology, benefit from accurate estimation of skill acquisition. We examine the accuracy of such predictions by having experimental participants predict the speed at which they will master an unfamiliar task. The first experiment finds systematic underestimation of learning, even after multiple rounds of performance feedback. Replicating earlier findings by psychologists, we observe an abrupt drop in confidence, from overconfidence to underconfidence, following initial task experience. The second experiment shows that underpredicting learning leads decision makers to make choices that lower average payoffs.
{"title":"Underestimating Learning by Doing","authors":"Samantha Horn, G. Loewenstein","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3941441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3941441","url":null,"abstract":"Many economic decisions, such as whether to invest in developing new skills, change professions, or purchase a new technology, benefit from accurate estimation of skill acquisition. We examine the accuracy of such predictions by having experimental participants predict the speed at which they will master an unfamiliar task. The first experiment finds systematic underestimation of learning, even after multiple rounds of performance feedback. Replicating earlier findings by psychologists, we observe an abrupt drop in confidence, from overconfidence to underconfidence, following initial task experience. The second experiment shows that underpredicting learning leads decision makers to make choices that lower average payoffs.","PeriodicalId":290366,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral & Experimental Economics eJournal","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124510807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many Operations Management (OM) models assume that people act as forward-looking optimizers in dynamic environments. We experimentally examine this assumption. To cover a wide range of settings we look at several common classes of dynamic decision problems, and characterize behavior as either optimal, or as consistent with one of several non-optimal policies. At a high level, our results suggest that behaviors are not uniform and depend on the features of the problem. Specifically we find that: (1) Decisions are generally forward-looking (though not always optimal) in Technology Adoption and Capacity Allocation problems, but not in Search/Stopping problems. (2) The optimal policy is a good, but not the best, representation of behavior in both Technology Adoption and in Capacity Allocation; in both tasks simpler forward-looking heuristics achieve a better fit. (3) Performance (payoff) is correlated within-subject for different dynamic tasks but the specific policy usage may vary even within-subject. Together, these results provide new micro-foundations for researchers interested in building more descriptive models of dynamic behavior.
{"title":"Dynamic Decision-making in Operations Management","authors":"E. Kagan, Stephen Leider, Ozge Sahin","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3937554","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3937554","url":null,"abstract":"Many Operations Management (OM) models assume that people act as forward-looking optimizers in dynamic environments. We experimentally examine this assumption. To cover a wide range of settings we look at several common classes of dynamic decision problems, and characterize behavior as either optimal, or as consistent with one of several non-optimal policies. At a high level, our results suggest that behaviors are not uniform and depend on the features of the problem. Specifically we find that: (1) Decisions are generally forward-looking (though not always optimal) in Technology Adoption and Capacity Allocation problems, but not in Search/Stopping problems. (2) The optimal policy is a good, but not the best, representation of behavior in both Technology Adoption and in Capacity Allocation; in both tasks simpler forward-looking heuristics achieve a better fit. (3) Performance (payoff) is correlated within-subject for different dynamic tasks but the specific policy usage may vary even within-subject. Together, these results provide new micro-foundations for researchers interested in building more descriptive models of dynamic behavior.","PeriodicalId":290366,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral & Experimental Economics eJournal","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115990016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines criticisms of libertarian paternalism, focusing in particular on so-called knowledge problems: the set of problems associated with the question of whether a choice architect would, or even could, have sufficient information to implement a successful libertarian paternalist policy. The paper builds on arguments presented in Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman's book Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics and Public Policy (2020). Although the paper supports Rizzo and Whitman's arguments about knowledge problems, it moves in a different, more social, direction when it comes to the implications of these criticisms for microeconomic-based governmental policy more generally.
{"title":"Libertarian Paternalism: Making Rational Fools","authors":"D. W. Hands","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3677631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3677631","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines criticisms of libertarian paternalism, focusing in particular on so-called knowledge problems: the set of problems associated with the question of whether a choice architect would, or even could, have sufficient information to implement a successful libertarian paternalist policy. The paper builds on arguments presented in Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman's book Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics and Public Policy (2020). Although the paper supports Rizzo and Whitman's arguments about knowledge problems, it moves in a different, more social, direction when it comes to the implications of these criticisms for microeconomic-based governmental policy more generally.","PeriodicalId":290366,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral & Experimental Economics eJournal","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114255728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：