Herding, Social Preferences and (Non-) Conformity

We study the role of social preferences and conformity in explaining herding behavior in anonymous risky environments. In an experiment similar to information cascade settings, but with no private information, we find no evidence for conformity. On the contrary, we observe a significant amount of non-conforming behavior, which cannot be attributed to errors.herding, information cascades, conformity, non-conformity, laboratory experiments

A Prize to Give for: An Experiment on Public Good Funding Mechanisms

This paper investigates fund-raising mechanisms based on a prize as a way to overcome free riding in the private provision of public goods, under the assumptions of income heterogeneity and incomplete information about income levels. We compare experimentally the performance of a lottery, an all-pay auction and a benchmark voluntary contribution mechanism. We find that prize-based mechanisms perform better than voluntary contribution in terms of public good provision after accounting for the cost of the prize. Comparing the prize-based mechanisms, total contributions are significantly higher in the lottery than in the all-pay auction. Focusing on individual income types, the lottery outperforms voluntary contributions and the all-pay auction throughout the income distribution.Auctions, Lotteries, Public Goods, Laboratory Experiments

A Prize to Give for: An Experiment on Public Good Funding Mechanisms

This paper investigates fund-raising mechanisms based on a prize as a way to overcome free riding in the private provision of public goods, under the assumptions of income heterogeneity and incomplete information about income levels. We compare experimentally the performance of a lottery, an all-pay auction and a benchmark voluntary contribution mechanism. We find that prize-based mechanisms perform better than voluntary contribution in terms of public good provision after accounting for the cost of the prize. Comparing the prize-based mechanisms, total contributions are significantly higher in the lottery than in the all-pay auction. Focusing on individual income types, the lottery outperforms voluntary contributions and the all-pay auction throughout the income distribution.Auctions, Lotteries, Public Goods, Laboratory Experiments

Testing Theories of Reciprocity: Do Motivations Matter?

One of the key issues for understanding reciprocity is how people evaluate the kindness of an action. In this paper we argue that the motivation driving an action plays an important role for the reciprocating response to that action. We test experimentally the hypothesis that reciprocal behavior is stronger in response to actions driven by intrinsic motivation, as opposed to extrinsic motivation. Our results indicate that reciprocity is significantly stronger when extrinsic motivation can be ruled out, both at the aggregate and the individual level. These findings suggest that models of reciprocal behavior should take into account not only outcomes but also intentions and, in particular, motivations: the type of motivation of an action matters for its perceived kindness and, as a consequence, for reciprocity.Reciprocity, Intrinsic Motivation, Laboratory Experiments

Social capital and Growth in Brazilian Municipalities

According to the modern theory of social capital (see Coleman (1990), Putnam (1993), Fukuyama (1995)), widespread trust would influence the economic performances of a country through a) reduction of transactional costs (monitoring and preventive activities to protect themselves from being exploited in economic transactions) and legal disputes; b) higher percentage of time devoted to innovation in new products or processes; c) higher reliability of formal institutions like the government and the central bank which implies that people can adopt more appropriate horizons in making investment decisions and choose production technologies that are optimal over the long, rather than short, run; d) a stronger social cohesion due to the sharing of ethical norms which induces cooperative behaviours and organisational innovations. On the basis of these theories a large number of empirical contributions which confirm the existence of a positive relation between growth, efficiency and the level of trust has been produced. Following the seminal work by Knack et al. (ibidem), we try to explain growth in Brazil over the period 2000-2003 using indicators of social capital. We develop our analysis at the most detailed geographical level, considering all 5507 municipalities. This choice is motivated by the great heterogeneity inside every country in terms of growth rate. While we observe homogeneity in some countries, like Sergipe, in other countries, like Sao Paulo, we have huge differences. This forces us to consider the municipalities as unit of observation; otherwise the country level would force us to loose all the heterogeneity. In order to obtain good measures of social capital, we start from a set of objective measure, and then analyse then with factor component analysis. We find a robust evidence of the positive effect of social capital on growth rates of income per capita.DYNREG15

Influential Listeners: An Experiment on Persuasion Bias in Social Networks

This paper presents an experimental investigation of persuasion bias, a form of bounded rationality whereby agents communicating through a social network are unable to account for possible repetitions in the information they receive. The results indicate that network structure plays a significant role in determining social influence. However, the most influential agents are not those with more outgoing links, as predicted by the persuasion bias hypothesis, but those with more incoming links. We show that a boundedly rational updating rule that takes into account not only agents' outdegree, but also their indegree, provides a better explanation of the experimental data. In this framework, consensus beliefs tend to be swayed towards the opinions of influential listeners. We then present an effort-weighted updating model as a more general characterization of information aggregation in social networks.

Local interaction Strategies and Capacity for Better Care in Nursing Homes: A Multiple Case Study

To describe relationship patterns and management practices in nursing homes (NHs) that facilitate or pose barriers to better outcomes for residents and staff. Methods: We conducted comparative, multiple-case studies in selected NHs (N = 4). Data were collected over six months from managers and staff (N = 406), using direct observations, interviews, and document reviews. Manifest content analysis was used to identify and explore patterns within and between cases. Results: Participants described interaction strategies that they explained could either degrade or enhance their capacity to achieve better outcomes for residents; people in all job categories used these 'local interaction strategies'. We categorized these two sets of local interaction strategies as the 'common pattern' and the 'positive pattern' and summarize the results in two models of local interaction. Conclusions: The findings suggest the hypothesis that when staff members in NHs use the set of positive local interaction strategies, they promote inter-connections, information exchange, and diversity of cognitive schema in problem solving that, in turn, create the capacity for delivering better resident care. We propose that these positive local interaction strategies are a critical driver of care quality in NHs. Our hypothesis implies that, while staffing levels and skill mix are important factors for care quality, improvement would be difficult to achieve if staff members are not engaged with each other in these ways.National Institutes of Health 2 R01NR003178-04A2Claude A. Pepper Older American's Independence Center AG-11268Paul A. Beeson Award NIA AG024787VA Health Services Research and Development EDU 08-417John A. Hartford Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Claire M. Fagin FellowshipBusiness Administratio

Economic Behavior under Alcohol Influence: An Experiment on Time, Risk, and Social Preferences

We report results from an incentivized laboratory experiment to provide controlled evidence on the causal effects of alcohol consumption on risk preferences, time perception and altruism. Our design allows disentangling the pharmacological effects of alcohol intoxication from those mediated by expectations, as we compare behaviors of three groups of subjects: those participating to an experiment with no reference to alcohol, those exposed to the possibility of consuming alcohol but assigned to a placebo and those having effectively consumed alcohol. Once randomly assigned to one treatment, subjects were administered a series of consecutive economic tasks, being the sequence kept constant across treatments. After controlling for both the willingness to pay and the potential misperception of probabilities as elicited in the experiment, we do not detect any effect of alcohol in depleting subjects’ risk tolerance. On the contrary, we find that alcohol intoxication increases impatience. Moreover, we find that alcohol makes subjects less generous as we detect a negative relationship between the blood alcohol concentration and the amount of money donated to NGOs