26 research outputs found
Public good provision, punishment, and the endowment origin: Experimental evidence
No full textThis paper studies contributions and punishments in a linear public good game, where group members have different sources of endowment. We compare the behavior of homogeneous groups, in which subjects are exogenously assigned the same endowments, with that of heterogeneous groups, in which half the group members have to exert effort to earn their endowments (effort subjects) and the other half are endowed with a windfall of equal value (windfall subjects).
If the opportunity to punish is absent, free-riding becomes the ubiquitous form of behavior over time both in homogeneous and in heterogeneous groups. If the opportunity to punish is present, contributions increase over time, although the two groups do not exhibit any differences in either the amount of contributions or the amount of punishment. Furthermore, effort and windfall subjects make similar contributions in heterogeneous groups.
Within the heterogeneous groups, over the entire time interval and conditional on the decision to punish, effort subjects punish (slightly) less severely than those who received windfall endowments
Data for: Do Altruists Lie Less?
No full textData of the deception game and the dice game from the paper "Do Altruists Lie Less?"
Generiert der stationäre Buchhandel positive Nachfrageeffekte und verhilft dadurch dem Kulturgut Buch bei seiner Verbreitung? Ein natürlliches Experiment
No full textIn Österreich wird die Buchpreisbindung durch ein Bundesgesetz aus dem Jahr 2000 geregelt. Dieses Gesetz sieht im Wesentlichen vor, dass Verlage/Importeure von deutschsprachigen Büchern einen Mindestpreis festzusetzen haben, der von den Letztverkäufern bei Verkäufen an Letztverbraucher einzuhalten ist. Im Jahr 2014 wurde das Bundesgesetz dahingehend novelliert, dass auch der grenzüberschreitende elektronische Handel und der Handel mit E-Books unter die Buchpreisbindung fallen. Die gesetzlichen Regelungen zur Buchpreisbindung polarisieren sehr stark und diese Polarisierung wird dadurch verstärkt, dass sich die Argumente der Befürworter und Gegner meist sehr schwer mit validen Daten belegen lassen. Oft werden zum Beispiel Ländervergleiche zwischen einem Land mit und einem Land ohne Buchpreisbindung herangezogen. Das Problem dieser Ländervergleiche ist oftmals, dass es sehr schwierig ist, den Effekt der Buchpreisbindung zu isolieren, da auch andere Faktoren zwischen den Ländern (Struktur der Buchbranche, Konsumverhalten der Bevölkerung, Förderlandschaft etc.) grundlegend variieren. [...] Aufgrund der klar abgegrenzten Forschungsfrage und dem methodologischen Zugang stellt diese Studie ein Komplement zu klassischen juristischen bzw. ökonomischen Studien über die Buchpreisbindung dar. Es ist nicht das Ziel dieser Studie alle Vorund Nachteile der Buchpreisbindung zu analysieren und entsprechende Handlungsempfehlungen zu geben. Der Aufbau der Studie ist folgendermassen gegliedert: Kapitel 2 beschreibt den methodologischen Zugang und Kapitel 3 erläutert das Studiendesign. Die Resultate werden in Kapitel 4 präsentiert. In Kapitel 5 werden die wichtigsten Resultate zusammengefasst und diskutiert
Data for: Do Altruists Lie Less?
No full textData of the deception game and the dice game from the paper "Do Altruists Lie Less?
What is trustworthiness and what drives it?
No full textThis paper reports the results of experiments designed to isolate the impact of various combinations of the following motives on trustworthiness: (i) unconditional other-regarding preferences - like altruism, inequality aversion, quasi-maximin, etc.; (ii) deal-responsiveness - reacting to actions that allow for a mutual improvement by adopting behavior that implies a mutual improvement; (iii) gift-responsiveness - reacting to choices that allow the trustee to obtain an improvement by adopting actions that benefit the trustor; and (iv) vulnerability-responsiveness - reacting to the vulnerability of the trustor by adopting actions that do not hurt the trustor. Our results indicate that - besides unconditional other-regarding preferences - vulnerability-responsiveness is an important determinant of trustworthiness even in cases where the vulnerability of the trustor does not come together with a gift to the trustee. Motivated by our empirical findings we provide formal definitions of trust and trustworthiness based on revealed willingness to accept vulnerability and the response to it
What is Trustworthiness and What Drives It?
No full textThis paper experimentally isolates the impact of various combinations of the following motives on trustworthiness: (i) unconditional other-regarding preferences; (ii) vulnerability-responsiveness; (iii) deal-responsiveness; and (iv) gift-responsiveness. Our results indicate that – besides unconditional other-regarding preferences like altruism and inequality aversion – vulnerability-responsiveness is the most important driver for trustworthiness. Prompted by our experimental findings we provide behavioral definitions of trust, trustworthiness, and trust-responsiveness based on revealed willingness to accept vulnerability and the response to it. An important difference from existing definitions is that ours allow trust to be present without generosity
What is Trustworthiness and What Drives It
No full textThis paper reports the results of experiments designed to isolate the impact of various combinations of the following motives on trustworthiness: (i) unconditional other-regarding preferences — like altruism, inequality aversion, quasi-maximin, etc.; (ii) deal-responsiveness — reacting to actions that allow for a mutual improvement by adopting behavior that implies a mutual improvement; (iii) gift-responsiveness — reacting to choices that allow the trustee to obtain an improvement by adopting actions that benefit the trustor; and (iv) vulnerability-responsiveness — reacting to the vulnerability of the trustor by adopting actions that do not hurt the trustor. Our results indicate that — besides unconditional other-regarding preferences — vulnerability-responsiveness is an important determinant of trustworthiness even in cases where the vulnerability of the trustor does not come together with a gift to the trustee. Motivated by our empirical findings we provide formal definitions of trust and trustworthiness based on revealed willingness to accept vulnerability and the response to it.To learn more about the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies and ExCEN Working Papers Series, visit https://aysps.gsu.edu/ and http://excen.gsu.edu/center/
Do the altruists lie less?
No full textMuch is known about heterogeneity in social preferences and about heterogeneity in lying aversion - but little is known about the relation between the two at the individual level. Are the altruists simply up- right persons who do not only care about the well-being of others but also about honesty? And are the selfish those who lie whenever lying maximizes their material payoff? This paper addresses those questions in experiments that first elicit subjects' social preferences and then let them make decisions in an environment where lying increases the own material payoff and has either consequences for the payoffs of others or no consequences for others. We find that altruists lie less when lying hurts another party but we do not find any evidence in support of the hypothesis that altruists are more (or less) averse to lying than others in environments where lying has no effects on the payoffs of others
Deep Neural Networks for Automatic Speaker Recognition Do Not Learn Supra-Segmental Temporal Features
No full textWhile deep neural networks have shown impressive results in automatic speaker recognition and related tasks, it is dissatisfactory how little is understood about what exactly is responsible for these results. Part of the success has been attributed in prior work to their capability to model supra-segmental temporal information (SST), i.e., learn rhythmic-prosodic characteristics of speech in addition to spectral features. In this paper, we (i) present and apply a novel test to quantify to what extent the performance of state-of-the-art neural networks for speaker recognition can be explained by modeling SST; and (ii) present several means to force respective nets to focus more on SST and evaluate their merits. We find that a variety of CNN- and RNN-based neural network architectures for speaker recognition do not model SST to any sufficient degree, even when forced. The results provide a highly relevant basis for impactful future research into better exploitation of the full speech signal and give insights into the inner workings of such networks, enhancing explainability of deep learning for speech technologies.7 pages, 2 figures, 3 table
Credence goods markets and the informational value of new media: A natural field experiment
No full textCredence goods markets are characterized by pronounced informational asymmetries between consumers and expert sellers. As a consequence, consumers are often exploited and market efficiency is threatened. However, in the digital age, it has become easy and cheap for consumers to self-diagnose their needs using specialized webpages or to access other consumers’ reviews on social media platforms in search for trustworthy sellers. We present a natural field experiment that examines the causal effect of information acquisition from new media on the level of sellers’ price charges for computer repairs. We find that even a correct self-diagnosis of a consumer about the appropriate repair does not reduce prices, and that an incorrect diagnosis more than doubles them. Internet ratings of repair shops are a good predictor of prices. However, the predictive valued of reviews depends on whether they are judged as reliable or not. For reviews recommended by the platform Yelp we find that good ratings are associated with lower prices and bad ratings with higher prices, while non-recommended reviews have a clearly misleading effect, because non-recommended positive ratings increase the price
