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No. 008
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- Rebecca B. Morton, Daniel Mueller, Lionel Page and Benno Torgler
- Exit Polls, Turnout, and Bandwagon Voting: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
We exploit a voting reform in France to estimate the causal eff ect of exit poll information on turnout and bandwagon voting. Before the change in legislation, individuals in some French overseas territories voted after
the election result had already been made public via exit poll information from mainland France. We estimate that knowing the exit poll information decreases voter turnout by about 12 percentage points. Our study is the fi rst clean empirical design outside of the laboratory to demonstrate
the e ffect of such knowledge on voter turnout. Furthermore, we fi nd that exit poll information signi ficantly increases bandwagon voting; that is, voters who choose to turn out are more likely to vote for the expected winner.
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No. 007
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- Lionel Page, David A. Savage and Benno Torgler
- Variation in risk seeking behavior following large losses: A natural experiment
This study explores people's risk attitudes after having suff ered large real-world losses following a natural disaster. Using the margins of the 2011 Australian
floods (Brisbane) as a natural experimental setting, we
find that homeowners who were victims of the floods and face large losses in property values are 50% more likely to opt for a risky gamble { a scratch card giving a small chance of a large gain ($500,000) { than for a sure amount of comparable value ($10). This finding is consistent with
prospect theory predictions of the adoption of a risk-seeking attitude after a loss.
- JEL-Codes: D03 D81 C93
- Keywords: Decision under risk, large losses, natural experiment
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No. 006
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- John P. Conley, Ali Sina Onder and Benno Torgler
- Are all High-Skilled Cohorts Created Equal? Unemployment, Gender, and Research Productivity
Using life cycle publication data of 9,368 economics PhD graduates from 127 U.S. institutions, we investigate how unemployment in the U.S. economy prior to starting graduate studies and at the time of entry into the academic job market affect economics PhD graduates’ research productivity. We analyze the period between 1987 and 1996 and find that favorable conditions at the time of academic job search have a positive effect on research productivity (measured in numbers of publications) for both male and female graduates. On the other hand, unfavorable employment conditions at the time of entry into graduate school affects female research productivity negatively, but male productivity positively. These findings are consistent with the notion that men and women differ in their perception of risk in high skill occupations. In the specific context of research-active occupations that require high skill and costly investment in human capital, an ex post poor return on undergraduate educational investment may cause women
to opt for less risky and secure occupations while men seem more likely to “double down” on their investment in human capital. Further investigation, however, shows that additional factors may also be at work.
- JEL-Codes: J16, J24
- Keywords: Research Productivity, Human Capital, Graduate Education, Gender Differences
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No. 005
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- David Stadelmann and Benno Torgler
- Bounded Rationality and Voting Decisions Exploring a 160-Year Period
Using a natural voting experiment in Switzerland that encompasses a 160-year period (1848–2009), we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on expert knowledge. We find that when more referenda are held on the same day, constituents are more likely to refer to parliamentary recommendations in making their decisions. This finding holds true even when
we narrow our focus to referenda with a relatively lower voter turnout on days on which more than one referendum was held. We also show that when constituents face a higher level of complexity, they listen to parliament rather than interest groups.
- JEL-Codes: D03, D72, D83, H70
- Keywords: Bounded rationality, voting, referenda attention, rules of thumb
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No. 004
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- Ho Fai Chan, Bruno S. Frey, Jana Gallus and Benno Torgler
- Does The John Bates Clark Medal Boost Subsequent Productivity And Citation Success?
Despite the social importance of awards, they have been largely disregarded by academic research in economics. This paper investigates whether a specific, yet important, award in economics, the John Bates Clark Medal, raises recipients’ subsequent research activity and status compared to a synthetic control group of nonrecipient scholars with similar previous research performance. We find evidence of positive incentive and status effects that raise both productivity and citation levels.
- JEL-Codes: A13, C23, M52
- Keywords: Awards, Incentives, Research, John Bates Clark Medal, Synthetic control method
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No. 003
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- Uwe Dulleck, Markus Schaffner and Benno Torgler
- Heartbeat and Economic Decisions: Observing Mental Stress among Proposers and Responders in the Ultimatum Bargaining Game
In line with experimental economics' goal of better understanding human economic decision making, early research on the ultimatum bargaining game (see Schmittberger, and Schwarze 1982) demonstrated that motives other than pure monetary reward play a role. More recently, the development of of neuroeconomic research techniques has allowed physiological reactions to be recorded as signals of emotional response. In this study, we apply heart rate variability (HRV) to explore the behaviour and physiological reactions during the ultimatum bargaining game of not only responders but also proposers. Because this technology is small and non-intrusive, we are able to run our experiment using a standard experimental economic setup. We find that low offers by a proposer cause signs of mental stress in both the proposer and the responder; that is, both exhibit high ratios of low to high frequency activity in the HRV spectrum.
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No. 002
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- Uwe Dulleck, Jonas Fooken and Yumei He
- Public Policy and Individual Labor Market Discrimination: An Artefactual Field Experiment in China
We study discrimination based on the hukou system, a policy segregating migrants and locals in urban China. We hired household aids as participants in our artefactual field experiment and use a gift exchange game to study labor market discrimination. We fi nd that social discrimination based on hukou status also implies individual level
discrimination. To identify whether discrimination is statistical or taste-based we introduce the wage promising game, a gift exchange game with a cheap talk wage promise. We find that discrimination is taste-based: Status is exogenous for our participants, migrants and locals behave similarly and discrimination increases when reasons for
statistical discrimination are removed.
- JEL-Codes: J7, C93, P36
- Keywords: labor market discrimination, artefactual field experiment, hukou
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No. 001
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- Uwe Dulleck, Jonas Fooken, Cameron Newton, Andrea Ristl, Markus Schaffner and Benno Torgler
- Tax Compliance and Psychic Costs: Behavioral Experimental Evidence Using a Physiological Marker
Although paying taxes is a key element in a well-functioning civilized society, the understanding of why people pay taxes is still limited. What current evidence shows is that, given relatively low audit probabilities and penalties in case of tax evasion, compliance levels are higher than would be predicted by traditional economics-of-crime models. Models emphasizing that taxpayers make strategic, financially motivated compliance decisions, seemingly assume an overly restrictive view of human nature. Law abidance may be more accurately explained by social norms, a concept that has gained growing importance as a facet in better understanding the tax compliance puzzle. This study analyzes the relation between psychic cost arising from breaking social norms and tax compliance using a heart rate variability (HRV) measure that captures the psychobiological or neural equivalents of psychic costs (e.g., feelings of guilt or shame) that may arise from the contemplation of real or imagined actions and produce immediate consequential physiologic discomfort. Specifically, this nonintrusive HRV measurement method obtains information on activity in two branches of the autonomous nervous system (ANS), the excitatory sympathetic nervous system and the inhibitory parasympathetic system. Using time-frequency analysis of the (interpolated) heart rate signal, it identifies the level of activity (power) at different velocities of change (frequencies), whose LF (low frequency) to HF (high frequency band) ratio can be used as an index of sympathovagal balance or psychic stress. Our results, based on a large set of observations in a laboratory setting, provide empirical evidence of a positive correlation between psychic stress and tax compliance and thus underscore the importance of moral sentiment in the tax compliance context.
- JEL-Codes: H26, H41, K42, D31, D63, C91
- Keywords: tax compliance, psychic costs, stress, tax morale, cooperation, heart rate variability, biomarkers, experiment
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