The negativity bias in news about how public money is used affects our willingness to pay taxes

To meet the public’s preference for negative content. the media tend to overreport negative news. Miloš Fišar, Tommaso Reggiani, Fabio Sabatini, and Jiří Špalek write that this negativity bias in the coverage of economic policy issues decreases tax compliance. Conversely, when people are exposed to authentic information about the appropriate use of tax revenues, compliance increases significantly

Reproducibility in Management Science

With the help of more than 700 reviewers we assess the reproducibility of nearly 500 articles published in the journal Management Science before and after the introduction of a new Data and Code Disclosure policy in 2019. When considering only articles for which data accessibility and hard- and software requirements were not an obstacle for reviewers, the results of more than 95% of articles under the new disclosure policy could be fully or largely computationally reproduced. However, for 29% of articles at least part of the dataset was not accessible to the reviewer. Considering all articles in our sample reduces the share of reproduced articles to 68%. These figures represent a significant increase compared to the period before the introduction of the disclosure policy, where only 12% of articles voluntarily provided replication materials, out of which 55% could be (largely) reproduced. Substantial heterogeneity in reproducibility rates across different fields is mainly driven by differences in dataset accessibility. Other reasons for unsuccessful reproduction attempts include missing code, unresolvable code errors, weak or missing documentation, but also soft- and hardware requirements and code complexity. Our findings highlight the importance of journal code and data disclosure policies, and suggest potential avenues for enhancing their effectiveness

Reproducibility in Management Science

With the help of more than 700 reviewers, we assess the reproducibility of nearly 500 articles published in the journal Management Science before and after the introduction of a new Data and Code Disclosure policy in 2019. When considering only articles for which data accessibility and hardware and software requirements were not an obstacle for reviewers, the results of more than 95% of articles under the new disclosure policy could be fully or largely computationally reproduced. However, for 29% of articles, at least part of the data set was not accessible to the reviewer. Considering all articles in our sample reduces the share of reproduced articles to 68%. These figures represent a significant increase compared with the period before the introduction of the disclosure policy, where only 12% of articles voluntarily provided replication materials, of which 55% could be (largely) reproduced. Substantial heterogeneity in reproducibility rates across different fields is mainly driven by differences in data set accessibility. Other reasons for unsuccessful reproduction attempts include missing code, unresolvable code errors, weak or missing documentation, and software and hardware requirements and code complexity. Our findings highlight the importance of journal code and data disclosure policies and suggest potential avenues for enhancing their effectivenes

Mind the framing when studying social preferences in the domain of losses

There is no consensus in whether monetary losses make individuals more generous or selfish. Utilizing a dictator game (DG), we study the impact of loss framing on altruism and find that dictators’ altruism is sensitive to the loss frame they are embedded in. In a DG in which the dictators share a loss between themselves and a recipient, the monetary allocations are more benevolent than in a setting without a loss and in a DG in which the dictators share what remains of their endowments after a loss. These differences are explained by the social norms the loss frames invoke

Coordinating donations via an intermediary: The destructive effect of a sunk overhead cost

Donors often use the services of an intermediary to prevent their donations from being too thinly distributed over multiple public projects. We explore whether donors’ willingness to coordinate their funds via an intermediary depends on the extent of the intermediary’s discretion over their contributions, as well as the organizational overhead costs incurred by the intermediary. We investigate this using a laboratory experiment in which donors face multiple identical threshold public goods and the opportunity to coordinate their contributions via another donor assigned to the role of intermediary. In line with standard game theoretic predictions, we find that donors make use of the intermediary only when they know she is heavily restricted in terms of the proportion of their contributions she can expropriate for herself. However, we find strong evidence that the positive effect of these restrictions is undone once the intermediary incurs a sunk overhead cost. Our analysis suggests that the ex-ante inequality created as a result of this sunk cost reduces the trustworthiness of the intermediary in the donors’ eyes, which in turn reduces the donors’ willingness to use the intermediary to coordinate their contributions effectively

Governmental Research Support Programs and Private Entities in Slovakia

The paper analyses public subsidies aimed to enhance development and innovation in the Slovakian private sector. The paper reviews theoretical approaches of the necessity of public support to research and development activities in order to increase private investment in research and development. An overview of research and development support tools in Slovakia is presented. The analytical part of the work is oriented on a comparative analysis of two granting agencies in Slovakia [Agency for Research and Development (ARD) and Agency of Operational Program Research and Development (OPRD)]. Special attention is given to direct public financial support. Logit analysis showed a relationship between success of grant applicants and their characteristics. We find that the following have impact on success of the application: Age of the company, amount of the grant required, legal form of the company, and the agency to which the application for grant was submitted. Applicants with legal form Ltd. (limited liability company) have a higher chance of receiving grant than other legal forms. The highest chance of success has a request for a grant of up to 500.000 €. According to the results of our analysis, the chance to obtain a grant decreases with each passing year

Reproducibility in Management Science

FNEGE 1*, HCERES A, ABS 4*International audienceWith the help of more than 700 reviewers, we assess the reproducibility of nearly 500 articles published in the journal Management Science before and after the introduction of a new Data and Code Disclosure policy in 2019. When considering only articles for which data accessibility and hardware and software requirements were not an obstacle for reviewers, the results of more than 95% of articles under the new disclosure policy could be fully or largely computationally reproduced. However, for 29% of articles, at least part of the data set was not accessible to the reviewer. Considering all articles in our sample reduces the share of reproduced articles to 68%. These figures represent a significant increase compared with the period before the introduction of the disclosure policy, where only 12% of articles voluntarily provided replication materials, of which 55% could be (largely) reproduced. Substantial heterogeneity in reproducibility rates across different fields is mainly driven by differences in data set accessibility. Other reasons for unsuccessful reproduction attempts include missing code, unresolvable code errors, weak or missing documentation, and software and hardware requirements and code complexity. Our findings highlight the importance of journal code and data disclosure policies and suggest potential avenues for enhancing their effectiveness.A complete list of the members of the Management Science Reproducibility Collaboration is included in Online Appendix A