Bringing the Lab to the Field: More than Changing Subjects

This paper discusses why running experiments in the field, outside of the university lab, can help us enrich the analysis we do of experimental data. One of the main arguments of the paper is that people participating in experiments, including students, do not come naked to the lab. They bring a great deal of rules of thumb, heuristics, values, prejudices, expectations and knowledge about the others participating, and about similar games, and use such information to make their decisions. The paper offers a short mention of relevant field experiments, and a more detailed look at field experiments conducted by the author, including a data set of CPR experiments run in 10 villages, between 2000 and 2002, with more than 1300 villagers in about 220 sessions, and replications with about 250 university students in more than 40 sessions. It offers then main lessons from bringing the lab to the field. Also there is a discussion of additional information gathered through different field instruments as well as community workshops with the participants to discuss the experimental data, the external validity of the experiments and their results, through parallels with their daily life. One of the lessons is that the greater variance in certain demographics about the experimental subjects might help explain variations in lab behavior that cannot be fully explained by the experimental institutions we study. Also, certain significant differences in behavior between villagers and students will be discussed.

Real Wealth and Experimental Cooperation: Evidence from Field Experiments

This paper explores how wealth and inequality can affect self-governed solutions to commons dilemmas by constraining group cooperation. It reports a series of experiments in the field where subjects are actual commons users. Household data about the participants-context explain statistically the usually observed wide variation found within and across groups in similar experiments. Participants-wealth and inequality reduced cooperation when groups were allowed to have face-toface communication between rounds. There are implications for a greater awareness of nonpayoff asymmetries affecting cooperation in heterogeneous groups, apart from heterogeneity in the payoffs structure of the game.Cooperation, Collective

Pro-social Behavior in the Global Commons: A North-South Experiment

Differences in group affiliation may affect the level of cooperation in global commons situations such as programs for the conservation of resources which generate benefits that transcend state boundaries. We design a real-time, cross-cultural common pool resource (CPR) experiment purposely using participants from cultures that derive different benefits from biodiversity (extraction versus conservation) to analyze the effect of group affiliation on cooperative behavior. In addition, we elicit real donations to local and international conservation funds to augment our CPR results. In the CPR environment, we find evidence that group affiliation affects hehavior such that heterogeneity contributes to over-extraction in the commons. In the donation stage, we show that nationality affects the distribution of donated earnings between the local and global funds. We also examine the possibility that altruistic preferences to donate to a conservation fund are endogenous, in that they reflect the level of cooperation in the CPR game.common pool resource, group affiliation, cooperation, cross-culture, dicator game, endogenous preferences, experiment

Behavioural Development Economics: Lessons from field labs in the developing world

Explanations of poverty, growth and development more generally depend on the assumptions made about individual preferences and the willingness to engage in strategic behaviour. Economic experiments, especially those conducted in the field, have begun to paint a picture of economic agents in developing communities that is at some variance from the traditional portrait. We review this growing literature with an eye towards preference-related experiments conducted in the field. We rely on these studies, in addition to our own experiences in the field, to offer lessons on what development economists might learn from experiments. We conclude by sharing our thoughts on how to conduct experiments in the field, and then offer a few ideas for future research.

What do people bring into the game? experiments in the field about cooperation in the commons

The study of collective action requires an understanding of the individual incentives and of the institutional constraints that guide people in making choices about cooperating or defecting on the group facing the dilemma. The use of local ecosystems by groups of individuals is just one example where individual extraction increases well-being, but aggregate extraction decreases it. The use of economic experiments has enhanced the already diverse knowledge from theoretical and field sources of when and how groups can solve the problem through selfgoverning mechanisms. These studies have identified several factors that promote and limit collective action, associated with the nature of the production system that allows groups to benefit from a joint-access local ecosystem, and associated with the institutional incentives and constraints from both self-governed and externally imposed rules. In general, there is widespread agreement that cooperation can happen and be chosen by individuals as a rational strategy, beyond the ?tragedy of the commons? prediction. A first step in this paper is to propose a set of layers of information that the individuals might be using to decide over their level of cooperation. The layers range from the material incentives that the specific production function imposes, to the dynamics of the game, to the composition of the group and the individual characteristics of the player. We next expand the experimental literature by analyzing data from a set of experiments conducted in the field with actual ecosystem users in three rural villages of Colombia using this framework. We find that repetition brings reciprocity motives into the decision making. Further, prior experience of the participants, their perception of external regulation, or the composition of the group in terms of their wealth and social position in the village, influence decisions to cooperate or defect in the experiment. The results suggest that understanding the multiple levels of the game, in terms of the incentives, the group and individual characteristics or the context, can help understand and therefore explore the potentials for solving the collective-action dilemma.collective action, cooperation, experimental economics, field experiments, local ecosystems

Risk Attitudes and Well-Being in Latin America

A common premise in both the theoretical and policy literatures on development is that people remain poor because they are too impatient to save and too risk averse to take the sort of chances needed to accumulate wealth. The empirical literature, however, suggests that this assumption is far from proven. We report on field experiments designed to address many of the issues confounding previous analyses of the links between risk preferences and well-being. Our sample includes more than 3,000 participants who were drawn representatively from six Latin American cities: Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Lima, Montevideo, San José. In addition to the experiment which reveals interesting cross-country differences, participants completed an extensive survey that provides data on a variety of well-being indicators and a number of important controls. Focusing on risk preferences, we find little evidence of robust links between risk aversion and well-being. However, when we analyze the results of three treatments designed to better reflect common choices made under uncertainty, we see that these, more subtle, instruments correlate better with well-being, even after controlling for a variety of other important factors like the accumulation of human capital and access to credit.risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, loss aversion, risk pooling, well-being, Latin America

Experiments and Economic Development: Lessons from Field Labs in the Developing World

Along with the traditional primitives of economic development (material preferences, technology, and endowments), there is a growing interest in exploring how psychological and sociological factores (e.g., bounded rationality, norms, or social preferences) also influence economic decisions, the evolution of institutions, and outcomes. Simultaneously, a vast literature has arisen arguing that economic experiments are important tools in identifying and quantifying the role of institutions, socialnorms and preferences on behavior and outcomes. Reflecting on our experience conducting experiments in the field over more than five years, we survey the growing literature at the intersection of these two research areas. Our review has four components. In the introduction we set the stage identifying a set of behavioral factors that seem to be central for understanding growth and economic development./ We then divide the existing literature in two piles: standard experiments conducted in the field and on how to econometrically identify sociological factors in experimental data. We conclude by suggesting topics for future research.experimental economics, behavioral economics, institutions, social preferences, poverty, development

How Do Groups Solve Local Commons Dilemmas? Lessons from Experimental Economics in the Field

The use of experimental settings to observe human behaviour in a controlled environment of incentives, rules and institutions, has been widely used by the behavioural sciences for some time now, particularly by psychology and economics. In most cases the subjects are college students recruited from one to two hour decision making exercises in which, depending on their choices, they earn cash averaging US$ 20. In such exercises players face a set of feasible actions, rules and incentives (payoffs) involving different forms of social exchange with other people, and that in most cases involve some kind of externalities with incomplete contracts, such as in the case of common-pool resources situations. Depending on the ecological and institutional settings, the resource users face a set of feasible levels of extraction, a set of rules regarding the control or monitoring of individual use, and sometimes ways of imposing material or non-material costs or rewards to those breaking or following the rules. We brought the experimental lab to the field and invited about two hundred users of natural resources in three Columbian rural villages to participate in such decision making exercises and through these and other research instruments we learned about the ways they solve - or fail to - tragedies of the commons with different social institutions. Further, bringing the lab to the field allowed us to explore some of the limitations of existing models about human behavior and its consequences for designing policies for conserving ecosystems and improving social welfare.co-operation, experimental economics, experiments, field experiments, collective action common-pool resources, Colombia, reciprocity, trust, reputation, regulation, crowding-out, institutions, game theory

Stated Social Behavior and Revealed Actions: Evidence from Six Latin American Countries Using Representative Samples

This paper explores the link between what people say they prefer to do and what they actually do. Using data from an experimental project exploring trust and pro-sociality for representative samples of individuals in six Latin American capital cities, the paper links the results of these experiments with the responses obtained from representative surveys to the same participating individuals. Individuals with higher agreement with a set of pro-social statements are those more willing to contribute and collaborate to the social welfare in the community, and what people say is linked to what people do. This supports the idea that the inclusion of subjective controls in the lefthand- side in an empirical specification does carry useful information.