Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: The present thesis is composed by three chapters, each of them making contributions to three distinct topics in behavioral Economics. The chapters can thus be read independently from each other. The first chapter concerns an experimental analysis which aim is to examine the development of social preferences with respect to age and how they are related with lying behavior of children. The second chapter investigates the role of reciprocity in exacerbating inefficient and opportunistic behavior in hierarchical organizations, when conflict of interests between its members arises at different levels. Finally, the third chapter contains a theoretical model explaining the emergence of the gender gap in top job positions in line with recent evidence provided by experimental Economics. While both the first and the second chapter in this thesis present experimental evidence, the experimental methods differ across them. In particular, in the first chapter we report evidence from an artefactual field experiment while the second chapter presents a conventional framed laboratory experiment . By using experiments, we are able to control and to impose exogenous variation to the environment where people make decisions. The third chapter applies a theoretical approach, with the model based on recent experimental evidence on the research topic of interest. Experimental Economics represents a useful contributor to Economic theory, strengthening its predictions or providing new insights for future development (Falk and Heckman, 2009). In the first two chapters of the present thesis, experiments allow us to observe and investigate the development of lying behavior during childhood and the emergence of an opportunistic conduct in the job environment, observations which are difficult to detect with empirical data. Finally, in the third chapter we translate the recent experimental research on gender differences in a more formal and tractable manner, through a stylized model. The first chapter of the thesis experimentally examines how the interaction between lying aversion and social preferences affects children’s behavior when playing a modified version of the dictator game. In the last decade, many experimental studies in Economics have investigated the role of other regarding preferences in determining the behavior of individuals: these empirical findings have confirmed that individuals are not just interested in maximizing their own welfare but, with some limitations, they have a concern for the welfare of the others (Henrich et al., 2004, Fehr and Schmidt, 2006). Paralleling to this stream of investigation, the lying behavior of individuals has been objective of interest of many experimental studies (Gneezy, 2005; Mazar et al., 2008). However, it is still a matter of discussion whether these features are innate or if they evolve over time, and how different incentives and contexts affects their development. In order to answer these questions it is interesting to analyze the behavior of children when facing relevant economic decisions in a controlled environment. In particular, in a sample of 637 children, aged between 7 and 14, we find strong aversion to lying at all ages, and especially among females. We find that while children become more concerned about other’s welfare as aging, they are not prone to violate moral norms in order to implement their other-regarding preferences. On the contrary, lying is more likely to be determined by selfish and envy motives, at all ages. The second chapter investigates the emergence of a dark side of reciprocity in the working environment. Reciprocity has been shown to be a desirable feature in organizations, reducing the costs of aligning interests between the principal and the agent. Both laboratory and field experiments (see Fehr and Falk (2008) for an overview of recent results), have provided evidence that workers respond to generous wage levels by exerting above minimal effort, confirming the gift-exchange hypothesis first formulated by Akerlof (1982). In hierarchical organizations, however, conflict of interests between its members may emerge at multiple levels: in such a situation, reciprocity exacerbate, rather than alleviate, the negative effects of members’ misalignment of objectives. The second chapter of this thesis consists in a laboratory experiment which aim is to analyze the selection and effort distortions resulting from agents persecuting their personal interest by taking advantage of workers’ reciprocal concerns. The results show that sharing part of the three-level hierarchical organization’s profit with workers, rather than only with agents, impedes the latter to exploit their powerful position at the disadvantage of the organization. The third chapter is about the role of self-confidence in determining females’ underrepresentation in high skilled occupations. Relying on recent experimental evidence which explains the occupational gender gap as the result of different preferences and attitudes of men and women with respect to risk, ambition, self-confidence and willingness to compete (Gneezy et al., 2003; Niederle and Vesterlund, 2007; Datta Gupta et al., 2013), we derive a model to explain the emergence of gender segregation in the labor market as a result of females’ biased beliefs regarding their ranking position with respect to other (male) candidates, when abilities are equally distributed among them. In particular, in our model, women self-select into low-skilled occupations according to their (mis)perceptions about their opportunity to be successfully recruited when competing for better positions. The third chapter further illustrates the powerful impact of affirmative actions in restoring efficiency in the job matching equilibrium between firms and workers. Indeed, in line with recent experimental evidence (Balafoutas and Sutter, 2012; Niederle et al., 2013), we provide a theoretical foundation to sustain the importance of implementing calibrated gender quota in order to restore the efficiency of job matching between high skilled firms and candidates, by encouraging skilled women to enter competition for top job market positions and thus increasing the diversity of qualified applicants.
Author: Valeria Maggian
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W87058804