How Competitive are Female Professionals? A Tale of Identity Conflict

We develop and test experimentally the argument that gender/family and/or professional identities, activated through psychological priming, may influence preference for competition. We focus on female professionals for whom these identities may conflict and male professionals for whom they may be reinforcing. We primed MBA-student participants by administering questionnaires that concerned either gender/family or professional issues. Subsequently, participants undertook a real-effort task and chose between piece-rate and competitive-tournament compensation. Identity priming, moderated by gender, significantly affected preference for competitive pay. This relationship was partially mediated by beliefs about oneÕs performance ranking. The implications of our results are profound. The decision to avoid competition made by many female professionals may be driven not by lack of ability, but rather by the increased salience of gender/family identity, influenced by marriage and motherhood over time. Indeed, activation of internalized identities might not only drive the experimental results, but also have strong implications for career choices and job performance of women, thus contributing to the observed gender and motherhood wage gaps.Experiment; Gender; Competitiveness; Identity; Priming; Family; Tournament

Saliency of Outside Options in the Lost Wallet Game

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Status Quo Effects in Fairness Games: Reciprocal Responses to Acts of Commission vs. Acts of Omission

Both the law and culture distinguish between acts of commission that overturn the status quo and acts of omission that uphold it. This distinction is of central importance when it comes to reciprocal actions. A stylized fact of everyday life is that acts of commission elicit stronger reciprocal responses than do acts of omission. We report experiments that directly test whether this stylized fact characterizes behavior in controlled experiments. We compare reciprocal responses to both types of acts in experiments using binary, extensive form games. Across three experiments, we examine the robustness of our results to different ways in which the status quo can be induced in experiments. The data show a clear difference between effects of acts of commission and omission by first movers on reciprocal responses by second movers

Experiments on Fairness and Reputation

This dissertation consists of three essays in experimental economics. The essays investigate different aspects of reputation in fairness games in a controlled laboratory environment. It has been established in the literature of economics, sociology, and psychology that social norms together with other-regarding preferences often govern subjects' decisions in addition to strategic considerations. The dissertation examines the incentives connected with the existence of social norms that could cause deviations from standard economic model predictions. I use experiments so that I can tightly control the environment and provide rigorous tests of existing theories, stylized facts, and anecdotal evidence on the importance of reputation in economic interactions. The first essay presents findings that reputation triggers indirectly reciprocal behavior of subjects. However, reputation might only be signaling what is considered as socially appropriate behavior. This hypothesis and the results of the first essay led me to develop a set of experiments in the second essay to contrast pure reputation effects with the social influence of reputation. The third part of the dissertation, co-authored with Ninghua Du, examines reputation and efficiency wages in a labor market setting by analyzing the effects of negative technological shocks on long run relationships between firms and workers

Laboratory experiments in economics, finance and political science

This special issue highlights the use of experiments in economics. It contains seven distinct laboratory experimental studies that explore various topics, including the importance of social context on trust and reciprocity, bargaining under great risk, collusion in hard close auctions, prices in experimental asset markets under uncertainty, the disciplining role of repeated elections, the timing of advertising under price competition and the effects of potential competition on firm pricing and entry decisions in the presence of sunk entry costs.

Vertical integration of successive monopolists: a classroom experiment

This classroom experiment introduces students to the concept of double marginalization, i.e., the exercise of market power at successive vertical layers in a supply chain. By taking on roles of firms, students determine how the mark-ups are set at each successive production stage. They learn that final retail prices tend to be higher than if the firms were vertically integrated. Students compare the welfare implications of two potential solutions to the double marginalization problem: acquisition and franchise fees. The experiment also can stimulate a discussion of two-part tariffs, transfer pricing, contracting, and the Coase theorem