Experimental Economics’ Ethics

A variety of ethical considerations in designing, conducting, and reporting both laboratory and field experiments in economics are reviewed. An important area of ethical concern in experimental economics stems from its use of human subjects. The standards used by Institutional Review Boards to sanction research using human subjects are expounded upon, with an emphasis on application to economics experiments. The authors draw from other experimental researchers and from their own experience to discuss issues related to the interaction of experimenter and subject - e.g., deception, informed consent, blindness, and monetary incentives - and issues related to the interaction of experimenter and consumer of research - e.g., the reporting of negative results, pilot data, or details of the experiment that may offer alternative interpretations of results

A New Perspective on Job Lock

This paper analyses the situation when employees fail to adapt to overall job dissatisfaction. By combining the existing knowledge in economics on job lock and in psychology on employees’ feeling of being ‘stuck’ at work, the paper explains why some employees fail to adapt when dissatisfied with their job. Thus, the paper aims to expand our understanding of why some employees are job locked or are ‘stuck’ at their work even though dissatisfied. Using the British household panel survey, the possibility of falling in a job-lock state is analyzed to outline a set of factors that explain why employees differ in the way they adjust to job dissatisfaction. We divide these factors into socio-demographic features, personality attributes, type of occupation, employment conditions, type of sector, and work-related contextual features. Based on results of probit regression analysis, we provide evidence that all these group of factors can jointly predict the state of job dissatisfaction, the absence of job turnover and job lock (being ‘stuck’ at job). Moreover, our results suggest that the adaptation to job dissatisfaction could be better understood if personality attributes (such as self-esteem) are included in the analysis. Thus, this study expands our understanding of how and why employees might feel ‘stuck’ at work and fall in a state of job lock