Identities, selection, and contributions in a public-goods game

The notions of one's social identity and group membership have recently become topics for economic theory and experiments, and recent research has shown the importance of identity in a wide array of economic environments. But predictions are unclear when there is some trade-off between one's identity (e.g., race, gender, handedness) and potential monetary considerations. We conduct a public-goods experiment in which we permit endogenous group-formation. In a 2x2 design, we vary whether people participate in a team-building exercise and whether some people receive an endowment twice as much as others receive. We find that when both identity and financial considerations are present, high-endowment participants are strongly attracted to each other, with one's word-task-group affiliation eclipsed by the opportunity to earn more. Nevertheless, the team-building exercise greatly increases the level of contribution whether or not one is linked to people from one's team-building exercise

Endogenous Sanctioning Institutions and Migration Patterns: Experimental Evidence

We experimentally analyze the effect of the endogenous choice of sanctioning institutions on cooperation and migration patterns across societies. In our experiment, subjects are allocated to one of two groups, are endowed with group-specific preferences,and play a public goods game for 30 periods. Each period, subjects can move between groups and, at fixed intervals, can vote on whether to implement formal (centralized) sanctioning institutions in their group. We compare this environment to one in which only one group is exogenously endowed with sanctioning institutions. We find that subjects' ability to vote on institutions leads to (i) a more efficient partition of subjects between groups, (ii) a lower migration rate, (iii) an increase in overall payoffs, and (iv) a decrease in both inter- and intra-groups (payoff) inequality. Over time, subjects tend to vote for sanctioning institutions and contribute to the public good

Inequality aversion among Spanish gypsies: an experimental approach [Aversión a la desigualdad entre gitanos Españoles: un enfoque experimental]

This paper presents a first attempt to measure inequality aversion among gypsies. We conducted an experiment among adult gypsies living at slums outside Vallecas (Madrid). To analyze this variable we use the mechanism provided by Kroll & Davidovitz (2003) among 38 voluntary participants. Results indicate that: i) 52.6% of the individuals are inequality averse; ii) there is a positive relationship between inequality aversion and some features of the population such as individual religious practice, marital status, family size, position in the hierarchy of the family or club association and, iii) neither wealth, nor participation in voluntary activities affect inequality aversion

The hidden advantage of delegation: pareto-improvements in a gift-exchange game

This paper analyzes the effect on performance and earnings of delegating the wage choice to employees. Our results how that such delegation significantly increases effort levels. Moreover, we observe a Pareto-improvement, as the earnings of both employers and employees increase when employers delegate than when they do not. Interestingly, we also find that the employees’ performance under delegation is higher than under non-delegation, even for similar wages. While there is strong evidence that behavior reflects strategic considerations, this result also holds for one-shot interactions. A possible non-strategic motivation explaining the positive reaction to delegation is a sense of enhanced responsibility

Job security and long-term investment: an experimental analysis

We investigate an experimental labor market setting in which we introduce the novel aspect that workers have the chance of investing money in a long-term project in order to increase their income. We find a strong relationship between what happens inside the labor market (worker's performance) and what happens outside the labor market (long-term investment). Contrary to the theoretical predictions with selfish preferences, we find that the mere presence of long-term projects acts as an effort-enforcement device; this effect seems to be driven by an increase in long-term employment relationships. In the other direction, long-term labor relationships seem to provide a safer environment for undertaking successful long-term projects. This article also considers three different types of experimental labor contracts. We find that performance-based dismissal barriers, whereby firms are required to retain workers if they have satisfied the effort level required by firms, lead to more long-term employment relationships and higher overall productivity. As theory predicts, the presence of renewable dismissal barriers makes it likely that workers will provide the desired effort level. Firms appear to correctly anticipate this, leading to greater social efficiency

Are women expected to be more generous?

This paper analyzes if men and women are expected to behave differently regarding altruism. Since the dictator game provides the most suitable design for studying altruism and generosity in the lab setting, we use a modifed version to study the beliefs involved in the game. Our results are substantial: men and women are expected to behave dfferently. Moreover, while women believe that women are more generous, men consider women as generous as me

Altruism and social integration

We develop a two-stage experimental protocol by which i) we elicit the social network within a group of undergraduate students and ii) we measure their altruistic attitudes by way of a standard Dictator game. We observe that more socially integrated subjects are also more altruistic, as betweenness centrality and reciprocal degree are positively correlated with the level of giving, even after controlling for the effect of social distance, which has been shown to affect giving. Our findings suggest that social distance and network position are complementary determinants of altruistic behavior

Anticipated Discrimination, Choices, and Performance: Experimental Evidence

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.This paper studies experimentally whether potential perceived discrimination affects decisions in a labor-market setting with different stereotypes. Participants are assigned to a seven-person group and randomly allocated a role as a firm or worker. In each group, there are five workers and two firms. The only information firms have about each worker is a self-selected avatar (male, female or neutral) representing a worker's gender. Each firm then decides which worker to hire. Female workers react to potential discrimination when they know the task is math-related, but not otherwise. Men choose similar avatar patterns regardless of the task. Men do perform at much higher levels in the math-related task, but there is no difference in performance in the emotion-recognition task, where there is a strong female stereotype.American University of SharjahUniversity of Exete

Inequity Concerns in Social Networks

This paper explores the role of social integration on inequity concerns. Using a three-phase experimental protocol we 6rst elicit a social network from a group of undergraduate students in Economics; in the second phase, 169 of these subjects have to assign a 6xed amount of money to only one of two individuals and, then, in the third stage they decide how much they are willing to pay to "repair" the created inequality. Our experi- mental data indicate that standard measures of network theory, such as betweenness, out-degree and reciprocal degree, have a positive e\ua7ect on inequity concerns. These results suggest that (1) pro-sociality and social networks coevolve and (2) information on the social network structure, in which subjects are embedded is important to account for their behavior

The development of social preferences

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordThis paper examines how social preferences develop with age. This is done using a range of mini-dictator games from which we classify 665 subjects into a variety of behavioural types. We expand on previous developmental studies of pro-sociality and parochialism by analysing individuals aged 9–67, and by employing a cross country study where participants from Spain interact with participants from different ethnic groups (Arab, East Asian, Black and White) belonging to different countries (Morocco, China, Senegal and Spain). We identify a ‘U-shaped’ relationship between age and egalitarianism that had previously gone unnoticed, and appeared linear. An inverse “U-shaped” relationship is found to be true for altruism. A gender differential is found to emerge in teenage years, with females becoming less altruistic but more egalitarian than males. In contrast to the majority of previous economic studies of the development of social preferences, we report evidence of increased altruism, and decreased egalitarianism and spite expressed towards black individuals from Senegal