The Impact of Financial Incentives on Task Performance: The Role of Cognitive Abilities & Intrinsic Motivation

The Impact of Financial Incentives on Task Performance: The Role of Cognitive Abilities and Intrinsic Motivation Ondrej Rydval Abstrakt v českém jazyce - dokument nenalezenDISSERTATION ABSTRACT Economists widely believe that, absent strategic considerations such as agency problems, financial incentives represent the dominant and effective stimulator of human productive activities. In production settings that are cognitively demanding, however, the effectiveness of financial incentives may be moderated by individual heterogeneity in cognitive abilities, intrinsic motivation and other personality characteristics. Even if strong financial incentives induce high effort, both financial and cognitive resources may be wasted for individuals with insufficient cognitive abilities. This prediction, if warranted, calls for attention to cognitive abilities in designing efficient incentive schemes in firms, experimental settings and elsewhere. My dissertation examines how financial incentives interact with intrinsic motivation and especially cognitive abilities in determining cognitive performance. In Rydval (2003), I present an initial literature review, particularly noting lack of empirical evidence on the interaction between financial incentives and cognitive abilities. Building on the review, Chapter 1 of the dissertation illustrates that general cognitive abilities appear at least as important for performance in a psychometric test as does a sizeable variation in piece-rate financial...CERGEFaculty of Social SciencesFakulta sociálních vě

How certain is the uncertainty effect

Abstract We replicate three tasks for which Gneezy, List and Wu (Q. J. Econ. 121(4): 2006) document the so-called uncertainty effect: People value a binary lottery over non-monetary outcomes less than other people value the lottery's worse outcome. While the authors implement verbal lottery descriptions, we use a physical lottery format and also provide subjects with complete information about the goods they are to value. We observe for all three pricing tasks that subjects' willingness to pay for the lottery is significantly higher than other subjects' willingness to pay for the lottery's worse outcome

Finanční stimuly a kognitivní schopnosti: důkaz z prognostické úlohy s různým kognitivním zatížením

I examine how financial incentives interact with intrinsic motivation and especially cognitive abilities in explaining heterogeneity in performance

The Impact of Financial Incentives on Task Performance: The Role of Cognitive Abilities & Intrinsic Motivation

DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Economists widely believe that, absent strategic considerations such as agency problems, financial incentives represent the dominant and effective stimulator of human productive activities. In production settings that are cognitively demanding, however, the effectiveness of financial incentives may be moderated by individual heterogeneity in cognitive abilities, intrinsic motivation and other personality characteristics. Even if strong financial incentives induce high effort, both financial and cognitive resources may be wasted for individuals with insufficient cognitive abilities. This prediction, if warranted, calls for attention to cognitive abilities in designing efficient incentive schemes in firms, experimental settings and elsewhere. My dissertation examines how financial incentives interact with intrinsic motivation and especially cognitive abilities in determining cognitive performance. In Rydval (2003), I present an initial literature review, particularly noting lack of empirical evidence on the interaction between financial incentives and cognitive abilities. Building on the review, Chapter 1 of the dissertation illustrates that general cognitive abilities appear at least as important for performance in a psychometric test as does a sizeable variation in piece-rate financial..