We model the dynamics of discrimination and show how its evolution can identify the underlying source. We test these theoretical predictions in a field experiment on a large online platform where users post content that is evaluated by other users on the platform. We assign posts to accounts that exogenously vary by gender and evaluation histories. With no prior evaluations, women face significant discrimination. However, following a sequence of positive evaluations, the direction of discrimination reverses: women’s posts are favored over men’s. Interpreting these results through the lens of our model, this dynamic reversal implies discrimination driven by biased beliefs. (JEL C93, D83, J16, J71)
{"title":"The Dynamics of Discrimination: Theory and Evidence","authors":"J. Bohren, A. Imas, Michael Rosenberg","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3081873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3081873","url":null,"abstract":"We model the dynamics of discrimination and show how its evolution can identify the underlying source. We test these theoretical predictions in a field experiment on a large online platform where users post content that is evaluated by other users on the platform. We assign posts to accounts that exogenously vary by gender and evaluation histories. With no prior evaluations, women face significant discrimination. However, following a sequence of positive evaluations, the direction of discrimination reverses: women’s posts are favored over men’s. Interpreting these results through the lens of our model, this dynamic reversal implies discrimination driven by biased beliefs. (JEL C93, D83, J16, J71)","PeriodicalId":345692,"journal":{"name":"Political Methods: Experiments & Experimental Design eJournal","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121822924","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 report results from a campus project in which participants volunteered to increase their exposure to news from diverse viewpoints for an extended period of time. Specifically, participants read email newsletters from the three leading US cable news stations, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, every weekday from April 1-25, 2017. Survey responses indicate that the experience led to increased interest in more diverse news when the project was completed, and an increase in actual consumption of more diverse news several months later, for a majority of the 53 participants who completed the project. The results also indicate that the experience mitigated liberal participants' hostility toward Fox News and President Trump. There was very little evidence of any backfire effects (exacerbation of hostility or disinterest in diverse news). We discuss why the seemingly non-ideal conditions of our experiment (a self-selected subject pool with weak incentives for compliance) likely actually increase the external validity and relevance of our results.
{"title":"Extended Exposure to Diverse News: Evidence from a Campus Project","authors":"Daniel F. Stone, Drew Van Kuiken, Justin Wallace","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3049015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3049015","url":null,"abstract":"We report results from a campus project in which participants volunteered to increase their exposure to news from diverse viewpoints for an extended period of time. Specifically, participants read email newsletters from the three leading US cable news stations, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, every weekday from April 1-25, 2017. Survey responses indicate that the experience led to increased interest in more diverse news when the project was completed, and an increase in actual consumption of more diverse news several months later, for a majority of the 53 participants who completed the project. The results also indicate that the experience mitigated liberal participants' hostility toward Fox News and President Trump. There was very little evidence of any backfire effects (exacerbation of hostility or disinterest in diverse news). We discuss why the seemingly non-ideal conditions of our experiment (a self-selected subject pool with weak incentives for compliance) likely actually increase the external validity and relevance of our results.","PeriodicalId":345692,"journal":{"name":"Political Methods: Experiments & Experimental Design eJournal","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114204328","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 investigates the presence of endogenous peer effects in the adoption of formal property rights. Using data from a unique land titling experiment held in an unplanned settlement in Dar es Salaam, the analysis finds a strong, positive impact of neighbor adoption on the household's choice to purchase a land title. The paper also shows that this relationship holds in a separate, identical experiment held a year later in a nearby community, as well as in administrative data for more than 160,000 land parcels in the same city. Although the exact channel is undetermined, the evidence points toward complementarities in the reduction in expropriation risk, as peer effects are strongest between households living close to each other and there is some evidence that peer effects are strongest for households most concerned with expropriation. The results show that, within the Tanzanian context, households will reinforce each other’s decisions to enter formal tenure systems.
{"title":"Peer Effects in the Demand for Property Rights: Experimental Evidence from Urban Tanzania","authors":"M. Collin","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-8163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-8163","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the presence of endogenous peer effects in the adoption of formal property rights. Using data from a unique land titling experiment held in an unplanned settlement in Dar es Salaam, the analysis finds a strong, positive impact of neighbor adoption on the household's choice to purchase a land title. The paper also shows that this relationship holds in a separate, identical experiment held a year later in a nearby community, as well as in administrative data for more than 160,000 land parcels in the same city. Although the exact channel is undetermined, the evidence points toward complementarities in the reduction in expropriation risk, as peer effects are strongest between households living close to each other and there is some evidence that peer effects are strongest for households most concerned with expropriation. The results show that, within the Tanzanian context, households will reinforce each other’s decisions to enter formal tenure systems.","PeriodicalId":345692,"journal":{"name":"Political Methods: Experiments & Experimental Design eJournal","volume":"123 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127047656","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}
On January 15, 2015 following a surprise announcement by the Swiss National Bank, the Swiss franc appreciated more than 15% within 30 minutes. This unexpected and large appreciation of a major currency constitutes a natural experiment to test for foreign exchange exposure of firms. We use 10-minute intra-day data and rank all 20 constituent firms in the Swiss stock market index (SSMI) according to their stock price reaction. The analysis yields a negative effect on average and large variations across firms. Importantly, the average stock price change is smaller in absolute terms than the change in the currency and implies an increased valuation of Swiss firms in foreign currency and positive returns for international investors. The theoretical framework demonstrates that stock price changes in response to FX changes can be exclusively caused by a global valuation effect for multinational firms. It follows that perfectly diversified firms must be exposed to currency changes.
{"title":"Global Valuation of Firms in a Natural Experiment","authors":"D. Baur, S. Rajakumar","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3014562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3014562","url":null,"abstract":"On January 15, 2015 following a surprise announcement by the Swiss National Bank, the Swiss franc appreciated more than 15% within 30 minutes. This unexpected and large appreciation of a major currency constitutes a natural experiment to test for foreign exchange exposure of firms. We use 10-minute intra-day data and rank all 20 constituent firms in the Swiss stock market index (SSMI) according to their stock price reaction. The analysis yields a negative effect on average and large variations across firms. Importantly, the average stock price change is smaller in absolute terms than the change in the currency and implies an increased valuation of Swiss firms in foreign currency and positive returns for international investors. The theoretical framework demonstrates that stock price changes in response to FX changes can be exclusively caused by a global valuation effect for multinational firms. It follows that perfectly diversified firms must be exposed to currency changes.","PeriodicalId":345692,"journal":{"name":"Political Methods: Experiments & Experimental Design eJournal","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127621805","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}
F. Dunsch, David K. Evans, Ezinne Eze-Ajoku, Mario Macis
If health service delivery is poorly managed, then increases in inputs or ability may not translate into gains in quality. However, little is known about how to increase managerial capital to generate persistent improvements in quality. We present results from a randomized field experiment in 80 primary health care centers (PHCs) in Nigeria to evaluate the effects of a health care management consulting intervention. One set of PHCs received a detailed improvement plan and nine months of implementation support (full intervention), another set received only a general training session, an overall assessment and a report with improvement advice (light intervention), and a third set of facilities served as a control group. In the short term, the full intervention had large and significant effects on the adoption of several practices under the direct control of the PHC staff, as well as some intermediate outcomes. Virtually no effects remained one year after the intervention concluded. The light intervention showed no consistent effects at either point. We conclude that sustained supervision is crucial for achieving persistent improvements in contexts where the lack of external competition fails to create incentives for the adoption of effective managerial practices.
{"title":"Management, Supervision, and Health Care: A Field Experiment","authors":"F. Dunsch, David K. Evans, Ezinne Eze-Ajoku, Mario Macis","doi":"10.3386/W23749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W23749","url":null,"abstract":"If health service delivery is poorly managed, then increases in inputs or ability may not translate into gains in quality. However, little is known about how to increase managerial capital to generate persistent improvements in quality. We present results from a randomized field experiment in 80 primary health care centers (PHCs) in Nigeria to evaluate the effects of a health care management consulting intervention. One set of PHCs received a detailed improvement plan and nine months of implementation support (full intervention), another set received only a general training session, an overall assessment and a report with improvement advice (light intervention), and a third set of facilities served as a control group. In the short term, the full intervention had large and significant effects on the adoption of several practices under the direct control of the PHC staff, as well as some intermediate outcomes. Virtually no effects remained one year after the intervention concluded. The light intervention showed no consistent effects at either point. We conclude that sustained supervision is crucial for achieving persistent improvements in contexts where the lack of external competition fails to create incentives for the adoption of effective managerial practices.","PeriodicalId":345692,"journal":{"name":"Political Methods: Experiments & Experimental Design eJournal","volume":"79 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126179607","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 article, we show that many citizens fail to vote because they are too tired. To do so, we leverage multiple approaches, including a unique natural quasi-experiment that exploits discontinuous decreases in sleep times on the eastern side of U.S. time zone boundaries. Our preferred model specification indicates that these exogenous decreases in sleep times depress county-level turnout in Congressional elections by about 2 percentage points. This effect is magnified in areas where obstacles to voting are greatest. Moreover, tiredness appears to exacerbate participatory inequality — depressing turnout in low propensity communities most — and push election outcomes towards Republicans. Supplementing this analysis, we conduct an observational study validating the direct relationship between tiredness and turnout. Our findings have important theoretical implications for the study of political participation. They suggest that many citizens hold the precursors to participation but lack the general, rather than expressly political, motivation to act on their intentions.
{"title":"Time Zones, Tiredness, and Turnout: A Natural Experiment on How Time Constraints Influence Elections","authors":"Jerome Schafer, John B. Holbein","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2881452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2881452","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we show that many citizens fail to vote because they are too tired. To do so, we leverage multiple approaches, including a unique natural quasi-experiment that exploits discontinuous decreases in sleep times on the eastern side of U.S. time zone boundaries. Our preferred model specification indicates that these exogenous decreases in sleep times depress county-level turnout in Congressional elections by about 2 percentage points. This effect is magnified in areas where obstacles to voting are greatest. Moreover, tiredness appears to exacerbate participatory inequality — depressing turnout in low propensity communities most — and push election outcomes towards Republicans. Supplementing this analysis, we conduct an observational study validating the direct relationship between tiredness and turnout. Our findings have important theoretical implications for the study of political participation. They suggest that many citizens hold the precursors to participation but lack the general, rather than expressly political, motivation to act on their intentions.","PeriodicalId":345692,"journal":{"name":"Political Methods: Experiments & Experimental Design eJournal","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129636408","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}
Pub Date : 2017-06-30DOI: 10.11644/KIEP.EAER.2017.21.2.325
Hankyoung Sung
This paper experimentally studies the performance of negotiation considering individual and party, like a country, share of benefit over the best ones. It experiments two-stage bargaining games, internal and external negotiations. From the experimental results, this paper shows strong tendency to select fair allocation in the internal negotiations, but the tendency would be weaker with attractive outside option. In addition, the outside option may claim difference in individual benefit. From the regressions on individual performance in the negotiations, being a proposing party would matter to enhance the performance. However, relative individual performance within party fairness matters. Still attractive no-agreement options happen to break the tendency. As policy implication for trade negotiation, this paper warns that possible loss in individual benefit from not active participation to the external negotiations, no active role of proposer in case that players stick to internal allocations, and deviation of advantageous sector due to attractive outside options.
{"title":"An Experimental Study on Internal and External Negotiation for Trade Agreements","authors":"Hankyoung Sung","doi":"10.11644/KIEP.EAER.2017.21.2.325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.11644/KIEP.EAER.2017.21.2.325","url":null,"abstract":"This paper experimentally studies the performance of negotiation considering individual and party, like a country, share of benefit over the best ones. It experiments two-stage bargaining games, internal and external negotiations. From the experimental results, this paper shows strong tendency to select fair allocation in the internal negotiations, but the tendency would be weaker with attractive outside option. In addition, the outside option may claim difference in individual benefit. From the regressions on individual performance in the negotiations, being a proposing party would matter to enhance the performance. However, relative individual performance within party fairness matters. Still attractive no-agreement options happen to break the tendency. As policy implication for trade negotiation, this paper warns that possible loss in individual benefit from not active participation to the external negotiations, no active role of proposer in case that players stick to internal allocations, and deviation of advantageous sector due to attractive outside options.","PeriodicalId":345692,"journal":{"name":"Political Methods: Experiments & Experimental Design eJournal","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125429669","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 investigates the potential of information technology to improve public service delivery and empower citizens. The investigation uses two randomized natural experiments in the renewal of national identification cards by the Bolivian Police. The first experiment arises from the random assignment of police officers and applicants to a manual or digital renewal process, which is identical in all other aspects. The second experiment arises from technical failures in the digital renewal process, which allow police officers to change from the digital to the manual renewal process randomly across renewal days. The efficiency of public service delivery is measured in renewal success rates (which average to a strikingly low rate of 72 percent in the sample) and the time it takes to renew an identification card. The findings show that applicants who were randomly assigned to the digital renewal process were on average 12 percentage points more likely to complete it, compared with those who were randomly assigned to the manual process. Further, successful applicants who were randomly assigned to the digital process took on average 31 percent less time to complete the process, compared with those who were randomly assigned to the manual process. The investigation finds that information technology significantly lowers barriers to accessing national identification cards, and promotes more equitable provision across the population. The findings suggest that information technology might achieve these goals by introducing efficiencies (such as reducing administrative shortcomings and transaction costs) and limiting the exercise of discretion by police officers in the renewal process.
{"title":"Information Technologies and Provision of National Identification Cards by the Bolivian Police: Evidence from Two Randomized Natural Field Experiments","authors":"Alberto Chong, C. Machicado, Monica Yanez Pagans","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-8083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-8083","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the potential of information technology to improve public service delivery and empower citizens. The investigation uses two randomized natural experiments in the renewal of national identification cards by the Bolivian Police. The first experiment arises from the random assignment of police officers and applicants to a manual or digital renewal process, which is identical in all other aspects. The second experiment arises from technical failures in the digital renewal process, which allow police officers to change from the digital to the manual renewal process randomly across renewal days. The efficiency of public service delivery is measured in renewal success rates (which average to a strikingly low rate of 72 percent in the sample) and the time it takes to renew an identification card. The findings show that applicants who were randomly assigned to the digital renewal process were on average 12 percentage points more likely to complete it, compared with those who were randomly assigned to the manual process. Further, successful applicants who were randomly assigned to the digital process took on average 31 percent less time to complete the process, compared with those who were randomly assigned to the manual process. The investigation finds that information technology significantly lowers barriers to accessing national identification cards, and promotes more equitable provision across the population. The findings suggest that information technology might achieve these goals by introducing efficiencies (such as reducing administrative shortcomings and transaction costs) and limiting the exercise of discretion by police officers in the renewal process.","PeriodicalId":345692,"journal":{"name":"Political Methods: Experiments & Experimental Design eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129292537","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}
Online product ratings offer information on product quality. Scholars have recently proposed the potential of designing multidimensional rating systems to better convey information on multiple dimensions of products. This study investigates whether and how multidimensional rating systems affect consumer satisfaction (measured by product ratings), based on both observational data and two randomized experiments. Our identification strategy of the observational study hinges on a natural experiment on TripAdvisor when the website started to allow consumers to rate multiple dimensions of the restaurants, as opposed to only providing an overall rating, in January 2009. We further obtain rating data on the same set of restaurants from Yelp, which controls for the unobserved restaurant quality over time and allows us to identify the causal effect using a difference-in-differences approach. Results from the econometric analyses show that ratings in a single-dimensional rating system have a downward trend and a hig...
{"title":"The Value of Multi-Dimensional Rating Systems: Evidence from a Natural Experiment and Randomized Experiments","authors":"Pei-yu Chen, Y. Hong, Y. Liu","doi":"10.1287/mnsc.2017.2852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2852","url":null,"abstract":"Online product ratings offer information on product quality. Scholars have recently proposed the potential of designing multidimensional rating systems to better convey information on multiple dimensions of products. This study investigates whether and how multidimensional rating systems affect consumer satisfaction (measured by product ratings), based on both observational data and two randomized experiments. Our identification strategy of the observational study hinges on a natural experiment on TripAdvisor when the website started to allow consumers to rate multiple dimensions of the restaurants, as opposed to only providing an overall rating, in January 2009. We further obtain rating data on the same set of restaurants from Yelp, which controls for the unobserved restaurant quality over time and allows us to identify the causal effect using a difference-in-differences approach. Results from the econometric analyses show that ratings in a single-dimensional rating system have a downward trend and a hig...","PeriodicalId":345692,"journal":{"name":"Political Methods: Experiments & Experimental Design eJournal","volume":"7 22","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120837244","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}
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