individual risk attitudes measurement determinants and behavioral consequences this paper studies risk attitudes using a large representative survey and a complementary experiment conducted with a representative subject pool in subjects homes using a question asking people about their willingness to take risks in general we find that gender age height and parental background have an economically significant impact on willingness to take risks the experiment confirms the behavioral validity of this measure using paid lottery choices turning to other questions about risk attitudes in specific contexts we find similar results on the determinants of risk attitudes and also shed light on the deeper question of stability of risk attitudes across contexts we conduct a horse race of the ability of different measures to explain risky behaviors such as holdings stocks occupational choice and smoking the question about risk taking in general generates the best all round predictor of risky behavior

do women have more shame than men an experiment on self assessment and the shame of overestimating oneself we analyze how subjects self assessment depends on whether its accuracy is observable to others we find that women downgrade their self assessment given observability while men do not this holds true when the self assessment concerns a task with individual as well as competitive incentives women avoid the shame they may have if others observe that they overestimated themselves men however do not seem to be similarly shame averse this gender difference may be due to different societal expectations while we find that men are expected to be overconfident women are not the negative effect on women s self assessment is eliminated when performance is only imperfectly observable shame aversion may explain recent findings that women shy away from competition demanding jobs and wage negotiations as entering these situations demonstrates confidence in one s ability

distributional preferences in probabilistic and share contests we analyze nash equilibria of probabilistic and share contests where players have distributional preferences if players are sufficiently similar distributional preferences create multiple equilibria for the case of only mildly heterogeneous players equilibrium effort can be lower as well as higher than effort exerted by players with selfish preferences these findings can explain the following three anomalies observed in empirical tests of probabilistic and share contests the large variance of effort levels overspreading individual spending that exceeds the nash equilibrium prediction overspending and aggregate spending that exceeds the value of the prize overdissipation if players are sufficiently heterogeneous the game has a unique equilibrium that is more egalitarian than the selfish nash equilibrium it turns out that the less talented competitor may win the larger share of the prize if his inequality aversion is sufficiently strong we analyze how the equilibria evolve if the number of players becomes larger and how sequential moves influence behavior two new insights follow from the analysis of the sequential move game first sequential moves act as a coordination device in case of multiple simultaneous equilibria and second inequality aversion of the more egalitarian player can be used as a commitment device for low effort this effect can reverse the conventional wisdom that the underdog should lead

a designer s choice between single prize and parallel tournaments in this article i theoretically and experimentally compare a designer s profits from two tournament designs the first design is a standard winner take all tournament with a single prize the second design features two winner take all parallel tournaments with different prizes where individuals choose which tournament to enter before competing i develop a simple model that illustrates how the relative performances of these designs change as contestants abilities differ the theoretical model shows that the designer s profit is higher lower in the parallel tournament when contestants abilities differ greatly are similar i complement these findings with experimental evidence the experiments show that the parallel tournament is more profitable under high heterogeneity whereas under low heterogeneity the designer is better off with the single prize tournament furthermore high ability agents under participate and low ability agents over participate in the high prize tournament relative to the theoretical prediction jel c72 d82 j33 m51 m52

the evolutionary theory of time preferences and intergenerational transfers at each age an organism produces energy by foraging and allocates this energy among reproduction survival growth and intergenerational transfers we characterize the optimal set of allocation decisions that maximizes fitness time preference the discount rate is derived from the marginal rate of substitution between energy obtained at two different times or ages holding fitness constant time preference varies with age in different ways depending on whether an individual is immature or mature and during the transition between these stages we conclude that time preference and discount rates are likely to be u shaped across age

distributional preferences and competitive behavior we study experimentally the relationship between distributional preferences and competitive behavior we find that spiteful subjects react strongest to competitive pressure and win in a tournament significantly more often than efficiency minded and inequality averse subjects however when given the choice between a tournament and a piece rate scheme efficiency minded subjects choose the tournament most often while spiteful and inequality averse subjects avoid it when controlling for distributional preferences risk attitudes and past performance the gender gap in the willingness to compete is no longer significant indicating that gender related variables explain why twice as many men as women self select into competition

egalitarianism and competitiveness competition is a cornerstone of economic life some environments are however more competitive than others and individuals are often confronted with the decision whether to self select into a competitive environment an important example is occupational choice a self employed lawyer is in constant competition for clients whereas a lawyer working as a civil servant in a public authority is not likewise some people vigorously compete for promo tion to better paid jobs associated with a high prestige while others don t understanding who self selects into competitive environments and who shies away from them is thus important in this paper we test the hypothesis that individu als with a preference for egalitarian outcomes are more reluctant to self select into competitive environments our hypothesis is based on i the observation that payoff inequalities among winners and losers arise as a natural by product of competition and ii the empirical literature showing that a nonnegligible share of children and adults is willing to incur costs to reduce earnings inequalities see e g christopher dawes et al 2007 ernst fehr helen bernhard and bettina rockenbach 2008 we analyze data from several economic experiments implemented in a household survey study with mothers of preschool children we

on the size of the gender difference in competitiveness we design a new procedure for measuring competitiveness and use it to estimate the magnitude of the gender gap in competitiveness before working on a task participants choose what percentage of their payoffs will be based on a piece rate compensation scheme the rest of their payoff is allocated to a competitive compensation scheme this novel procedure allows us to distinguish between 101 levels of competitiveness as opposed to the binary measure used in the literature whereas the binary measure allows researchers to conclude that about twice as many men as women choose to compete typically two thirds versus one third the new procedure sheds light on the intensive margin we find that the intensity of the preference is more extreme than the binary measure could detect for example we find that only one fifth of the most competitive 25 of our participants are women and the most competitive 10 of our participants are all men the new procedure also allows us to study the correlation between comp

are risk aversion and impatience related to cognitive ability is the way that people make risky choices or tradeoffs over time related to cognitive ability this paper investigates whether there is a link between cognitive ability risk aversion and impatience using a representative sample of the population and incentive compatible measures we conduct choice experiments measuring risk aversion and impatience over an annual time horizon for a randomly drawn sample of roughly 1 000 german adults subjects also take part in two different tests of cognitive ability which correspond to sub modules of one of the most widely used iq tests interviews are conducted in subjects own homes we find that lower cognitive ability is associated with greater risk aversion and more pronounced impatience these relationships are significant and robust to controlling for personal characteristics educational attainment income and measures of credit constraints we perform a series of additional robustness checks which help rule out other possible confounds

do women shy away from competition do men compete too much we examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme although there are no gender differences in performance men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance while 73 percent of the men select the tournament only 35 percent of the women make this choice this gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only playa negligible role instead the tournament entry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition the result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it

coordination with third party externalities abstract when agents face coordination problems their choices often impose externalities on third parties if an agent cares about them or believes others do they can affect equilibrium selection we present evidence from lab experiments showing that changes in the size and the sign of third party externalities have a significant impact on tacit coordination decision makers are more willing to incur a cost to try to avoid imposing a large negative externality on a third party than they are to avoid a small negative externality or to generate a large positive externality however when decision makers incentives are at odds with the interests of third parties many of them appear to ignore third party externalities even if they are large in magnitude and ignoring them implies substantial earning inequalities and reductions in group earnings individuals revealed to be other regarding in a non strategic allocation task often behave as if selfish when trying to coordinate we discuss explanations for our findings

revealed distributional preferences individuals vs teams we compare experimentally the revealed distributional preferences of individuals and teams in allocation tasks we find that teams are significantly more benevolent than individuals in the domain of disadvantageous inequality while the benevolence in the domain of advantageous inequality is similar across decision makers a consequence for the frequency of preference types is that while a substantial fraction of individuals is classified as inequality averse this type disappears completely in teams spiteful types are markedly more frequent among individuals than among teams on the other hand by far more teams than individuals are classified as efficiency lovers

the impact of management incentives in intergroup contests abstract in intergroup contests a manager advises and motivates her group s members her rewards often depend on the subsequent contest expenditure of the members i test whether such incentives undermine the credibility and effectiveness of a manager s efforts in the different experimental treatments the managers either benefit from very high or low expenditure or get a predetermined payment the results show that different management incentives shape the expenditure of the group members even if managers have an advisory role only however group members follow recommendations more closely if management compensation is not linked to contest expenditures

do quotas help women to climb the career ladder a laboratory experiment abstract women are less likely to enroll in selective or scientific courses applying for promotions and are particularly underrepresented in both middle and top positions in the stem field quota are often advocated as an instrument to reduce this gender gap but it remains unclear at what step of the career ladder they more effectively foster women s reaching the top many factors may affect quota s success or failure such as how they would in turn affect teamwork and trust between members within organizations or coordination in applying for promotions in this paper by means of a laboratory experiment implementing a two stage tournament we evaluate the impact of three different interventions in affecting individual decision to climb the career ladder abstracting away from other possible confounding factors we find that compared with no intervention a gender quota introduced in the initial stage of competition was ineffective in encouraging women to compete for the top quotas introduced in the final stage of competition or at both stages increased women s willingness to compete for the top without distorting the performance of the winners

the impact of advice on women s and men s selection into competition we conduct a laboratory experiment to study how advice by a more experienced and better informed person affects an individual s entry into a real effort tournament and the gender gap our experiment is motivated by the concerns raised by approaching the gender gap through affirmative action policies overall advice improves the entry decision of subjects in that forgone earnings due to wrong entry decisions go significantly down the improvements are mainly driven by increased entry of strong performing women who also become more confident and reduced entry of weak performing men we find that the overall gender gap persists even though it disappears among low and strong performers the persistence is due to an emerging gender gap among intermediate performers driven by women men following more the advice to stay out of enter the tournament in this performance group this paper was accepted by uri gneezy behavioral economics

balance of power and the propensity of conflict we study the role of an imbalance in fighting strengths when players bargain in the shadow of conflict our experimental results suggest in a simple bargaining game with an exogenous mediation proposal the likelihood of conflict is independent of the balance of power if bargaining involves endogenous demand choices however the likelihood of conflict is higher if power is more imbalanced even though endogenous bargaining outcomes reflect the players unequal fighting strengths strategic uncertainty causes outcomes to be most efficient when power is balanced in turn the importance of exogenous mediation proposals depends on the balance of power

cost effective policy instruments for greenhouse gas emission reduction and fossil fuel substitution through bioenergy production in austria abstract climate change mitigation and security of energy supply are important targets of austrian energy policy bioenergy production based on resources from agriculture and forestry is an important option for attaining these targets to increase the share of bioenergy in the energy supply supporting policy instruments are necessary the cost effectiveness of these instruments in attaining policy targets depends on the availability of bioenergy technologies advanced technologies such as second generation biofuels biomass gasification for power production and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage beccs will likely change the performance of policy instruments this article assesses the cost effectiveness of energy policy instruments considering new bioenergy technologies for the year 2030 with respect to greenhouse gas emission ghg reduction and fossil fuel substitution instruments that directly subsidize bioenergy are compared with instruments that aim at reducing ghg emissions a spatially explicit modeling approach is used to account for biomass supply and energy distribution costs in austria results indicate that a carbon tax performs cost effectively with respect to both policy targets if beccs is not available however the availability of beccs creates a trade off between ghg emission reduction and fossil fuel substitution biofuel blending obligations are costly in terms of attaining the policy targets

do gender variant preferences for competition persist in the absence of performance the well established gender gap in preferences for competition has been attributed to gender variant feelings about performing in competitive environments using a novel task with agency in which subjects experience competition but cannot perform we find evidence that performing may be sufficient but not necessary to generate gender variant preferences for competition this suggests that the gender gap cannot be eliminated by correcting beliefs alone that eliminating performance for example routinizing tasks may not eliminate the gender gap and that there may be heretofore unidentified determinants of preferences for competition for example men may prefer payment schemes that are based on social comparison jel j16 c91 j24

can social preferences explain gender differences in economic behavior abstract this study examines whether gender differences in some economic behaviors are due to differences in social preferences as measured by dictator allocation decisions we find that compared to men women are significantly more likely to be inequity averters and significantly less likely to be social surplus maximizers these differences in social preferences explain to a large extent why women send less than men in trust games inequity averters can ensure equal payoffs if nothing is returned by sending one fourth of the endowment while surplus maximizers can increase total payoffs by a factor of three for each dollar sent social preferences also help explain the size of gifts in dictator games and choice of compensation method for simple tasks however after controlling for social preference type gender is still influential in these decisions women give significantly more to charity than men even after accounting for our measure of social preferences women prefer egalitarian payment systems both because they are inequity averters and because low self confidence may lead them to believe they will earn more with equal sharing

performance in competitive environments gender differences even though the provision of equal opportunities for men and women has been a priority in many countries large gender differences prevail in competitive high ranking positions suggested explanations include discrimination and differences in preferences and human capital in this paper we present experimental evidence in support of an additional factor women may be less effective than men in competitive environments even if they are able to perform similarly in non competitive environments in a laboratory experiment we observe as we increase the competitiveness of the environment a significant increase in performance for men but not for women this results in a significant gender gap in performance in tournaments while there is no gap when participants are paid according to piece rate this effect is stronger when women have to compete against men than in single sex competitive environments this suggests that women may be able to perform in competitive environments per se