Teaching through television: Experimental evidence on entrepreneurship education in Tanzania

Can television be used to teach and foster entrepreneurship among youth in developing countries? We report from a randomized control field experiment of an edutainment show on entrepreneurship broadcasted over almost three months on national television in Tanzania. The field experiment involved more than 2,000 secondary school students, where the treatment group was incentivized to watch the edutainment show. We find some suggestive evidence of the edutainment show making the viewers more interested in entrepreneurship and business, particularly among females. However, our main finding is a negative effect: the edutainment show discouraged investment in schooling without convincingly replacing it with some other valuable activity. Administrative data show a strong negative treatment effect on school performance, and long-term survey data show that fewer treated students continue schooling, but we do not find much evidence of the edutainment show causing an increase in business ownership. The fact that an edutainment show for entrepreneurship caused the students to invest less in education carries a general lesson to the field experimental literature by showing the importance of taking a broad view of possible implications of a field intervention.publishedVersio

Do non-Enforcable Contracts Matter? Evidence from an International Experiment, 2008

Many verifiable contracts are impossible or difficult to enforce. This applies to contracts among family and friends, contracts regulating market transactions, and sovereign debt contracts. Do such non-enforceable contracts matter? "Do non-Enforcable Contracts Matter? Evidence from an International Experiment, 2008" studies repayment decisions in the presence of non-enforceable loan contracts by using a version of the trust game with participants from Norway and Tanzania. The main findings are that the specific content of the contract has no effect on loan repayment. Rather, the borrowers seem to be motivated by other moral motives, which contributes to explaining why they partly fulfill non-enforceable contracts. The results also show that some borrowers violate the axiom of first-order stochastic dominance when rejecting loan offers. This seems partly to be due to negative reciprocity, but may also reflect that there are individuals who have a preference for not accepting something referred to as a "loan". "Do non-Enforcable Contracts Matter? Evidence from an International Experiment, 2008" is generated in the project "Responsibility, Individual Choice and Restributive Policy"

Just Luck - An Experimental Study of Risk Taking and Fairness, 2007

Choices involving risk significantly affect the distribution of income and wealth in society. "Just Luck - An Experimental Study of Risk Taking and Fairness, 2007" reports the results of the first experiment (to the researchers`knowledge) to study fairness views about risktaking, specifically whether such views are based chiefly on ex ante opportunities or on ex post outcomes. The results show that even though many participants focus exclusively on ex ante opportunities, most favor some redistribution ex post. Many participants also make a distinction between ex post inequalities that reflect differences in luck and ex post inequalities that reflect differences in choices. These findings apply to both stakeholders and impartial spectators. "Just Luck - An Experimental Study of Risk Taking and Fairness, 2007" is generated in the project "Responsibility, Individual Choice and Restributive Policy"

The Importance of Moral Reflection and Self-Reported Data in a Dictator Game with Production, 2006

"The Importance of Moral Reflection and Self-Reported Data in a Dictator Game with Production, 2006" studies how individual behavior is affected by moral reflection in a dictator game with production. In the experiment individuals reflect on fairness, in a structured way, before they play the dictator game. The results suggest that moral reflection not only increases the weight people attach to fairness in distributive choices, but also has a strong effect on what people consider fair. Furthermore, the self-reported data are found to have substantial informational value, but do not add explanatory power to a random utility model estimated on purely behavioral data. Finally, the project investigates whether there is a self-serving bias in the participants’ fairness perceptions, but evidence of this phenomenon is not found in the data. "The Importance of Moral Reflection and Self-Reported Data in a Dictator Game with Production, 2006" is generated in the project "Responsibility, Individual Choice and Restributive Policy"

Needs vs. Entitlements? An International Fairness Experiment, 2007

What is the relative importance of needs, entitlements, and nationality in people's social preferences? To study this question, this project conducted a real-effort dictator experiment where students in two of the world's richest countries, Norway and Germany, were matched directly with students in two of the world's poorest countries, Uganda and Tanzania. The experimental design made the participants face distributive situations where different moral motives came into play, and based on the observed behavior a social preference model focusing on how people make trade-offs between entitlements, needs, and self-interest was estimated. The study provides four main findings. First, entitlement considerations are crucial in explaining distributive behavior in the experiment; second, needs considerations matter a lot for some participants; third, the participants acted as moral cosmopolitans and did not assign importance to nationality in their distributive choices; and, finally, the participants' choices are consistent with a self-serving bias in their social preferences. "Needs vs. Entitlements? An International Fairness Experiment, 2007" is generated in the project "Responsibility, Individual Choice and Restributive Policy"

Responsibility for What? Fairness and Individual Responsibility, 2006

What should individuals be held responsible for? This is a fundamental question in much of the contemporary debate on distributive justice. Different fairness ideals, such as strict egalitarianism, and different versions of equal opportunity ethics and libertarianism give different answers to this question. In order to study the prevalence of these fairness ideals in society, this project present the results from a dictator game where the distribution phase is preceded by a production phase. Each participant's contribution is a result of working time, productivity and price. Factors are estimated for what factors the participants hold each other responsible for and the weight they attach to fairness. In addition, the study discuss how fairness preferences relate to business education and labour market experiences by comparing the estimates for business students at different stages of their education, and by comparing the estimates for final-year business students with the estimates for former business students with some years of work experience. "Responsibility for What? Fairness and Individual Responsibility, 2006" is generated in the project "Responsibility, Individual Choice and Restributive Policy"

When Do We Lie? 2012

"When Do We Lie? 2012" reports from an experiment studying how the aversion to lying is affected by non-economic dimensions of the choice situation. Specifically the study investigates whether people are more or less likely to lie when the content of the lie is personal, when they base decisions on intuition, and when they are in a market context. In addition, the study focused on how aversion to lying depends on personal characteristics, including age, gender, cognitive ability, personality and social preferences. The main finding is that non-economic aspects of the choice situation are crucial in understanding aversion to lying. In particular, people seem to be less likely to lie when the content of the message is personal. There are also found to be large effects from priming the participants to rely on intuition, but, interestingly, in this case the effect only applies to males. Finally, people who are highly motivated by social preferences are more averse to lying, but there is no significant relationship between lying behavior and other personal characteristics. "When Do We Lie? 2012" is generated in the project "Responsibility, Individual Choice and Restributive Policy"

The Development of Inequality Acceptance, 2007

Fairness considerations fundamentally affect human behavior, but our understanding of the nature and development of people's fairness preferences is limited. The dictator game has been the standard experimental design for studying fairness preferences, but it only captures a situation where there is broad agreement that fairness requires equality. In real life, people often disagree on what is fair because they disagree on whether individual achievements, luck, and efficiency considerations of what maximizes total benefits can justify inequalities. In this study the the dictator game was modified to capture these features and studied how inequality acceptance develops in adolescence. The results show that as children enter adolescence, they increasingly view inequalities reflecting differences in individual achievements, but not luck, as fair, whereas efficiency considerations mainly play a role in late adolescence. "The Development of Inequality Acceptance, 2007" is generated in the project "Responsibility, Individual Choice and Restributive Policy"

Rettferdighet på hjernen

Hjernen har lenge vært en sort boks for økonomer, men i økende grad har økonomer begynt å studere hvilke mentale prosesser som ligger bak folks valg. Ikke minst forsøker man å forstå hvorfor folk noen ganger velger å gjøre det de oppfatter som rettferdig, selv om det går på bekostning av deres økonomiske egeninteresse. Er vi predisponert for å opptre rettferdig, eller er dette en atferd som er kjennetegnet av at vi overstyrer våre grunnleggende egoistiske drifter? Dette spørsmålet er grunnleggende i all samfunnsforskning, og økonomifaget har benyttet to ulike metoder for å finne svar. Den ene metoden er å studere aktiviteten i hjernen når vi foretar økonomiske valg og vurderinger. Moderne skanningsteknologi har gjort at dette nå er praktisk mulig. Det har bidratt til fremveksten av et nytt forskningsfelt: nevroøkonomi. Den andre metoden har vært å studere reaksjonstiden hos beslutningstakere når de kan gjøre valg mellom mer eller mindre rettferdige alternativer. Her har den grunnleggende ideen vært at raske beslutninger reflekterer predisponerte vurdereringer som er basert intuisjon. I denne artikkelen presenterer vi noen sentrale resultater fra denne forskningen. Hovedfunnet er at mennesker genuint liker rettferdighet, og at vi instinktivt opptrer rettferdig