Gender-science implicit association and employment decisions (with Giovanni Immordino) WP [link]
In this paper, we document that implicit associations, measured by the gender-science implicit association test, explain employment decisions, both in terms of access to the labour market and in terms of career advancement. In both cases, when choosing between a female and a male worker with the same ex-ante ability, the higher the male-science implicit association of the employer, the higher her/his likelihood of hiring/promoting a male intentionally and the lower her/his likelihood of leaving the decision to chance. Increasing the incentives to employers does not vary the effect of implicit gender-science association which is also not heterogeneous by gender, age or income earned.
Preference-based hiring decisions and incentives (with Giovanni Immordino, Journal of the Economic Science Association, 2023) [link]
This article replicates an experiment by Coffman et al. (2021) who separated taste-based and statistical discrimination by comparing employer choices in one of two hiring environments (treatments). Both treatments were characterized by the same ability distributions of workers in tasks on which men are found to outperform women on average, but only one allowed for gender-specific considerations. We found statistical discrimination against women when they are presented to employers not as women, but as people belonging to a low-performance group, but discrimination in their favour when their gender is revealed to potential employers. This discrimination in favour of women was observed for both male and female employers. It was greater when employers were women and disappeared when monetary incentives to employ more productive workers were higher for employers.
Incentive-induced group identity and subsequent altruism and cooperation WP [link]
In this paper, we studied the spillover effects of cooperative and competitive incentive schemes on subsequent decisions involving altruism and cooperation. We collected data with a laboratory experiment where subjects were asked to perform Mini Dictator games and a Public Good game after playing an incentivized real effort task. We found that cooperative incentives foster higher subsequent altruism and cooperation as compared with competitive or individual incentives. By contrast, competitive incentives induced more envy towards competitor peers and more spiteful behaviour when giving implies a larger payoff for the recipient. The effect of incentives on altruism and cooperation was moderated by relative rank in the incentivized effort task and by individual level of impulsivity.
Concepts and calculations: gender differences in willingness to guess Journal of Human Capital, 2023 [link]
We study gender differences in willingness to guess. We present the results of a field experiment where participants were asked to answer true/false questions. We vary whether questions on the same subject are presented as calculations or understanding of concepts and whether a penalty is imposed for incorrect answers. We find that, when giving an incorrect answer is not penalized, there are no gender differences in willingness to guess. However, when there is a penalty for incorrect answers, females are significantly more likely to skip questions if they involve calculations while they answer significantly more questions than males when they are asked to figure out the truthfulness of a concept. The gap in willingness to guess never affects performance. Results are driven by participants endowed with a lower level of ability. When digging deeper to understand possible mechanisms at work, consistently with the literature, we find that differences in risk propensity help to explain the gender gap in numerical questions. Also, confidence contributes to explaining females’ higher willingness to guess than males in conceptual questions. We suggest that a possible explanation of our evidence lies in the role of stereotypes.
Is it a boy or a girl? Newborn gender and household portfolio decisions (with Francesca Arnaboldi and Elena Beccalli, European Financial Management, 2023) [link]
This paper analyzes the role of newborn gender in household investment decisions. Parenting a new baby is associated with a reduction of the share of financial wealth held as cash and an increase of risky investments. The reallocation is however gender-heterogeneous: the increase in the share of both total and financial wealth allocated to risky assets when parenting a girl is reduced for households parenting a baby boy. The effect is driven by the first child. Our results suggest that parents of newborn girls hold riskier portfolios because they make financial decisions influenced by societal gender stereotypes of the roles of sons and daughters in adulthood.
Online Teaching, Procrastination and Students' Achievement (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2023, Economics of Education Review, 94, 102378) [link]
Despite growing consensus in the public debate that self-discipline is key to succeeding in an online learning environment, the evidence available is very limited. We investigate the role of procrastination as a moderator of the impact of online teaching on student performance. We take advantage of the forced transition from traditional class-based to online teaching induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and adopt a difference-in-differences strategy using administrative data of four cohorts of students enrolled in an Italian University. We find that online teaching has reduced student performance by about 1.4 credits per semester on average (0.11 Standard Deviations). However, this aggregate effect masks great heterogeneity as the negative influence on performance varies significantly according to student tendency to procrastinate with online teaching being particularly detrimental for students affected by present-bias problems. The total negative effect for procrastinators amounts to more than 18% of the workload for a semester, so implying a potential delay of approximately two semesters in the expected date of graduation for students following an online as opposed to a face-to-face five-year Degree course.
Female leadership: Effectiveness and Perception (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2022, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 201, pp.134-162) [link]
We ran a field experiment to investigate whether individual performance in teams was affected by the gender of the leader. About 430 students from an Italian University took an intermediate exam that was partly evaluated on the basis of teamwork. Students were randomly matched in teams of three and, in each team, we randomly chose a leader entrusted with the task of coordinating the work of the team. We find a positive and significant effect of female leadership on team performance. This effect is driven by the higher performance of team members in female-led teams rather than by an improvement in leader performance. In spite of the higher performance of female-led teams, male members tended to evaluate female leaders as less effective, whereas female members have provided more favorable judgments. Our results are consistent with stereotypically feminine personality traits influencing leadership style and the decision on the amount of effort to exert in a task where females are contravening stereotypical behavior and their traditional societal role.
The Health-Economy Trade-off during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Communication Matters (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Carrieri, 2021, PloS one, 16(9), e0256103) [link]
How do people balance concerns for general health and economic outcomes during a pandemic? And, how does the communication of this trade-off affect individual preferences? We address these questions using a field experiment involving around 2000 students enrolled in a large university in Italy. We design four treatments where the trade-off is communicated using different combinations of a positive framing that focuses on protective strategies and a negative framing which refers to potential costs. We find that positive framing on the health side induces students to give greater relevance to the health dimension. The effect is sizeable and highly effective among many different audiences, especially females. Importantly, this triggers a higher level of intention to adhere to social distancing and precautionary behaviors. Moreover, irrespective of the framing, we find a large heterogeneity in students’ preferences over the trade-off. Economics students and students who have directly experienced the economic impact of the pandemic are found to give greater value to economic outcomes.
Selection and Incentives under Time Pressure: the Importance of Framing (with Maria De Paola and Valeria Pupo) WP [link]
In this paper we investigate whether the framing of the incentives used to foster participation into contexts characterized by high degrees of time pressure affects individuals' self-selection. At this aim we run a lab-in-the-field experiment structured in two parts. The first part investigates individual characteristics that affect performance under time pressure, while the second is devoted to analyze how the decision to work under time pressure is affected by the reward/punishment framing of incentives. We find that individuals characterized by a high degree of risk aversion perform worse under time pressure. Nonetheless, when facing a penalty incentive scheme these individuals are more likely to choose to work with strict term limits, suggesting that penalty contracts might generate adverse selection problems.
Does Reminding of Behavioural Biases Increase Returns from Financial Trading? A Field Experiment (with Maria De Paola and Fabio Piluso, 2020, International Journal of Economics and Finance, 12(2), pp. 1-21) [link]
Nudge policies are interventions that aim to guide the individual to behave according to the policy’s objectives without changing the option set or economic incentives. We ran a field experiment to investigate whether nudge policies, consisting in behavioural insight messaging, help to improve performance in financial trading. Our experiment involved students enrolled in a financial trading course in an Italian University who were invited to trade on Borsa Italiana’s virtual platform. Students were randomly assigned to a control group and a treatment group. Treated students received a message reminding them of the existence of behavioural biases in financial trading. We find that treated students significantly improve the performance of their portfolio. Several behaviours may explain the increase in performance. We find evidence pointing to a reduction in the home and status quo biases for risk averse nudged participants.
Incentive Schemes and Peer Effects on Risk Behaviour: an Experiment (2019, Theory and Decision, 87(4), pp.473-495) [link]
This paper studies whether incentivizing performance with competition and cooperation-based incentive schemes, rather than individual compensation, affects peer effects on subsequent risk behaviour. We run a laboratory experiment in which we introduce three different compensation schemes—piece rate, the equal-split-sharing-rule and a tournament—associated with a real effort task and we measure risk behaviour both before and after the effort task. We find that competition more than halves peer influence on risk behaviour compared with piece-rate compensation and in some specifications produces negative peer effects. Competition also significantly reduces an individual’s feeling of attachment to their peers and self-reported peer influence.
Free-riding and Knowledge Spillovers in Teams. The Role of Social Ties (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2019, European Economic Review, 112, pp.74-90) [link]
We investigate whether and how social ties affect performance in teams by implementing a field experiment in which a sample of undergraduate students are randomly assigned either to teams composed by friends or to teams composed by individuals not linked by friendship relationships. Students undertake an intermediate exam divided into two parts: one graded on the basis of individual performance and the other graded on the basis of team performance. We find that students assigned to socially connected teams perform significantly better than control students in both the team part and the individual part of the exam, suggesting that social ties are relevant both for solving free-riding problems and for inducing knowledge spillovers among teammates. The positive effect of friendship persists over time: treated students obtain better grades also after the conclusion of the experiment.
The Adverse Consequences of Tournaments: Evidence from a Field Experiment (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2018, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 151, pp.1-18) [link]
We ran a field experiment to investigate whether competing in rank-order tournaments with different prize spreads affects individual performance. Our experiment involved students from an Italian University who took an exam that was partly evaluated on the basis of relative performance. Students were matched in pairs on the basis of their high school grades and each pair was randomly assigned to one of three different tournaments. Random assignment neutralizes selection effects and allows us to investigate if larger prize spreads increase individual effort. We do not find any positive effect of larger prizes on performance. Furthermore, we show that the effect of prize spreads on students’ performance depends on their degree of risk-aversion: competing in tournaments with large spreads negatively affects the performance of risk-averse students, while it does not produce any effect on students who are more prone to taking risks.
Competition and Subsequent Risk-Taking Behaviour: Heterogeneity across Gender and Outcomes (with Antonio Filippin, 2018, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 75, pp.84-94) [link]
This paper studies if competition affects subsequent risk-taking behaviour by means of a laboratory experiment that manipulates the degree of competitiveness of the environment under equivalent monetary incentives. We find that competition increases risk aversion, especially for males, but not in a significant manner. When conditioning on the outcome, we find that males become significantly more risk averse after losing the tournament than after randomly earning the same low payoff. In contrast, males do not become more risk-seeking after winning the tournament, while females’ average risk-taking behaviour is unaffected by tournament participation and outcomes. Our findings can be rationalized using the results of the literature on self-serving attribution.
Peer Effects On Risk Behaviour: The Importance Of Group Identity (2017, Experimental Economics, 20(1), pp.100-129) [link]
This paper investigates whether and to what extent group identity plays a role in peer effects on risk behaviour. We run a laboratory experiment in which different levels of group identity are induced through different matching protocols (random or based on individual painting preferences) and the possibility to interact with group members via an online chat in a group task. Risk behaviour is measured by using the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task and peer influence is introduced by giving subjects feedback regarding group members’ previous decisions. We find that subjects are affected by their peers when taking decisions and that group identity influences the magnitude of peer effects: painting preferences matching significantly reduces the heterogeneity in risk behaviour compared with random matching. On the other hand, introducing a group task has no significant effect on behaviour, possibly because interaction does not always contribute to enhancing group identity. Finally, relative riskiness within the group matters and individuals whose peers are riskier than they are take on average riskier decisions, even when controlling for regression to the mean.
Does patience matter in marriage stability? Some evidence from Italy (with Maria De Paola, 2017, Review of Economics of the Household, 15(2), pp.549-577) [link]
Time preferences can affect divorce probability by both affecting the quality of the match and affecting the spouses’ reactions to negative shocks. We analyse the relationship between time preferences and divorce decisions using data from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth, which provides a measure of time preferences based on a hypothetical financial situation in which individuals have to decide how much money to give up in order to receive a certain amount of money immediately rather than in one year’s time. By controlling for a number of individual and family characteristics, we find that impatient individuals are more likely to experience divorce. The effect is robust to different specifications of our model and is not affected by reverse causality problems. We also find that the more risk averse individuals are, the less likely they are to experience divorce.
Impatience and Academic Performance. Less effort and less ambitious goals (with Maria De Paola, 2017, Journal of Policy Modeling, 39(3), pp.443-460) [link]
Using data from a sample of Italian undergraduate students, we find a negative relationship between time preferences and academic performance. We also find that impatient students, even those who were pretty sure, at the moment of enrollment, of being able to accomplish their degree within the regular time, are more likely to drop out or to be late in their educational career. Our results do not suffer from reverse causality problems and are robust controlling for a large number of individual characteristics, such as family income, cognitive abilities and risk aversion.
Who performs better under time pressure? Results from a field experiment (with Maria De Paola, 2016, Journal of Economic Psychology, 53, pp.37-53) [link]
We investigate whether and how time pressure affects performance. We conducted a field experiment in which students from an Italian University are proposed to choose between two exam schemes: a standard scheme without time pressure and an alternative scheme consisting of two written intermediate tests, one of which to be taken under time pressure. Students deciding to sustain the alternative exam are randomly assigned to a “time pressure” and a “no time pressure” group. Students performing under time pressure at the first test perform in absence of time pressure at the second test and vice versa. We find that being exposed to time pressure exerts a negative and statistically significant impact on students’ performance. The effect is driven by a strong negative impact on females’ performance, while there is no statistically significant effect on males. Both the quantity and quality of females’ work is hampered by time pressure. Using data on students’ expectations, we also find that the effect produced by time pressure on performance was correctly perceived by students. Female students expect a lower grade when working under time pressure, while males do not. These findings contribute to explain why women tend to shy away from jobs and careers involving time pressure.
Are Females Scared of Competing with Males? Results from a Field Experiment (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2015, Economics of Education Review, vol. 48, pp.117-128) [link]
We conducted a field experiment involving 720 Italian undergraduate students to investigate the existence of gender differences in performance in competitive settings and whether performance is affected by one's opponent gender. The experimental design was aimed at neutralizing other differences in psychological attitudes, such as self-confidence and risk aversion, that are typically considered as potential explanations of gender differences in competitive environments. Students were invited to undertake a midterm exam under a tournament scheme having as a prize some bonus points to add to the final grade. Students competed in pairs of equal predicted ability but different gender composition. In a competitive setting in which risk aversion, feedback provision and self-confidence have little relevance, we find that women tend to perform similarly to men. The gender of one's competitor does not play any role in shaping students’ behavior. Men and women perform similarly both in the competitive and in the non-competitive environment.
Overconfidence, Omens and Gender Heterogeneity: Results from a Field Experiment (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2014, Journal of Economic Psychology, 45, pp.237-252) [link]
We investigate whether overconfidence is affected by superstitious beliefs and whether the effect is heterogeneous according to gender. With this aim, we run a field experiment involving about 700 Italian students. According to widespread superstitions, some numbers are considered lucky while others are thought of as unlucky. In our experiment, we exploited this by randomly assigning students to numbered seats in their written exam. At the end of the examination, we asked students the grade they expected to get. We find that students tend to be overconfident about their performance at the exam and that their overconfidence is positively affected by being assigned to a lucky number. Interestingly, males and females react differently: females’ overconfidence tends to be negatively affected when assigned to unlucky numbers, while they are not affected by being assigned to lucky numbers; males are not affected by being assigned to unlucky numbers but are more overconfident when assigned to lucky numbers.
Risk Aversion And Field Of Study Choice: The Role Of Individual Ability (with Maria De Paola, 2012, Bulletin of Economic Research, 64 (s1), pp.s193-s209) [link]
Does the choice of field of study depend on individual risk aversion? The direction of the relationship between individual risk attitudes and type of university degree chosen is potentially ambiguous. On the one hand, risk averse individuals may prefer degree courses which allow high returns in the labour market; on the other hand, if these degrees expose students to a higher probability of dropping out, those who are more risk averse may be induced to choose less challenging fields. Using data from a sample of students enrolled at a middle-sized Italian public university in 2009, we find that, controlling for a large number of individual characteristics, more risk averse students are more likely to choose any other field (Humanities, Engineering, and Sciences) rather than Social Sciences. We interpret this result bearing in mind that some of these fields, such as Humanities, involve a reduction in the risk of dropping out, while others (such as Engineering and Sciences) involve a lower risk in the labour market. It also emerges that the effect of risk aversion on degree choice is related to student ability. Risk averse students characterized by high abilities tend to prefer Engineering, while the propensity of risk averse students to enrol in Humanities decreases when ability increases, suggesting that the attention paid to labour market risks and drop-out risk varies according to student skills.
In this paper, we document that implicit associations, measured by the gender-science implicit association test, explain employment decisions, both in terms of access to the labour market and in terms of career advancement. In both cases, when choosing between a female and a male worker with the same ex-ante ability, the higher the male-science implicit association of the employer, the higher her/his likelihood of hiring/promoting a male intentionally and the lower her/his likelihood of leaving the decision to chance. Increasing the incentives to employers does not vary the effect of implicit gender-science association which is also not heterogeneous by gender, age or income earned.
Preference-based hiring decisions and incentives (with Giovanni Immordino, Journal of the Economic Science Association, 2023) [link]
This article replicates an experiment by Coffman et al. (2021) who separated taste-based and statistical discrimination by comparing employer choices in one of two hiring environments (treatments). Both treatments were characterized by the same ability distributions of workers in tasks on which men are found to outperform women on average, but only one allowed for gender-specific considerations. We found statistical discrimination against women when they are presented to employers not as women, but as people belonging to a low-performance group, but discrimination in their favour when their gender is revealed to potential employers. This discrimination in favour of women was observed for both male and female employers. It was greater when employers were women and disappeared when monetary incentives to employ more productive workers were higher for employers.
Incentive-induced group identity and subsequent altruism and cooperation WP [link]
In this paper, we studied the spillover effects of cooperative and competitive incentive schemes on subsequent decisions involving altruism and cooperation. We collected data with a laboratory experiment where subjects were asked to perform Mini Dictator games and a Public Good game after playing an incentivized real effort task. We found that cooperative incentives foster higher subsequent altruism and cooperation as compared with competitive or individual incentives. By contrast, competitive incentives induced more envy towards competitor peers and more spiteful behaviour when giving implies a larger payoff for the recipient. The effect of incentives on altruism and cooperation was moderated by relative rank in the incentivized effort task and by individual level of impulsivity.
Concepts and calculations: gender differences in willingness to guess Journal of Human Capital, 2023 [link]
We study gender differences in willingness to guess. We present the results of a field experiment where participants were asked to answer true/false questions. We vary whether questions on the same subject are presented as calculations or understanding of concepts and whether a penalty is imposed for incorrect answers. We find that, when giving an incorrect answer is not penalized, there are no gender differences in willingness to guess. However, when there is a penalty for incorrect answers, females are significantly more likely to skip questions if they involve calculations while they answer significantly more questions than males when they are asked to figure out the truthfulness of a concept. The gap in willingness to guess never affects performance. Results are driven by participants endowed with a lower level of ability. When digging deeper to understand possible mechanisms at work, consistently with the literature, we find that differences in risk propensity help to explain the gender gap in numerical questions. Also, confidence contributes to explaining females’ higher willingness to guess than males in conceptual questions. We suggest that a possible explanation of our evidence lies in the role of stereotypes.
Is it a boy or a girl? Newborn gender and household portfolio decisions (with Francesca Arnaboldi and Elena Beccalli, European Financial Management, 2023) [link]
This paper analyzes the role of newborn gender in household investment decisions. Parenting a new baby is associated with a reduction of the share of financial wealth held as cash and an increase of risky investments. The reallocation is however gender-heterogeneous: the increase in the share of both total and financial wealth allocated to risky assets when parenting a girl is reduced for households parenting a baby boy. The effect is driven by the first child. Our results suggest that parents of newborn girls hold riskier portfolios because they make financial decisions influenced by societal gender stereotypes of the roles of sons and daughters in adulthood.
Online Teaching, Procrastination and Students' Achievement (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2023, Economics of Education Review, 94, 102378) [link]
Despite growing consensus in the public debate that self-discipline is key to succeeding in an online learning environment, the evidence available is very limited. We investigate the role of procrastination as a moderator of the impact of online teaching on student performance. We take advantage of the forced transition from traditional class-based to online teaching induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and adopt a difference-in-differences strategy using administrative data of four cohorts of students enrolled in an Italian University. We find that online teaching has reduced student performance by about 1.4 credits per semester on average (0.11 Standard Deviations). However, this aggregate effect masks great heterogeneity as the negative influence on performance varies significantly according to student tendency to procrastinate with online teaching being particularly detrimental for students affected by present-bias problems. The total negative effect for procrastinators amounts to more than 18% of the workload for a semester, so implying a potential delay of approximately two semesters in the expected date of graduation for students following an online as opposed to a face-to-face five-year Degree course.
Female leadership: Effectiveness and Perception (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2022, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 201, pp.134-162) [link]
We ran a field experiment to investigate whether individual performance in teams was affected by the gender of the leader. About 430 students from an Italian University took an intermediate exam that was partly evaluated on the basis of teamwork. Students were randomly matched in teams of three and, in each team, we randomly chose a leader entrusted with the task of coordinating the work of the team. We find a positive and significant effect of female leadership on team performance. This effect is driven by the higher performance of team members in female-led teams rather than by an improvement in leader performance. In spite of the higher performance of female-led teams, male members tended to evaluate female leaders as less effective, whereas female members have provided more favorable judgments. Our results are consistent with stereotypically feminine personality traits influencing leadership style and the decision on the amount of effort to exert in a task where females are contravening stereotypical behavior and their traditional societal role.
The Health-Economy Trade-off during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Communication Matters (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Carrieri, 2021, PloS one, 16(9), e0256103) [link]
How do people balance concerns for general health and economic outcomes during a pandemic? And, how does the communication of this trade-off affect individual preferences? We address these questions using a field experiment involving around 2000 students enrolled in a large university in Italy. We design four treatments where the trade-off is communicated using different combinations of a positive framing that focuses on protective strategies and a negative framing which refers to potential costs. We find that positive framing on the health side induces students to give greater relevance to the health dimension. The effect is sizeable and highly effective among many different audiences, especially females. Importantly, this triggers a higher level of intention to adhere to social distancing and precautionary behaviors. Moreover, irrespective of the framing, we find a large heterogeneity in students’ preferences over the trade-off. Economics students and students who have directly experienced the economic impact of the pandemic are found to give greater value to economic outcomes.
Selection and Incentives under Time Pressure: the Importance of Framing (with Maria De Paola and Valeria Pupo) WP [link]
In this paper we investigate whether the framing of the incentives used to foster participation into contexts characterized by high degrees of time pressure affects individuals' self-selection. At this aim we run a lab-in-the-field experiment structured in two parts. The first part investigates individual characteristics that affect performance under time pressure, while the second is devoted to analyze how the decision to work under time pressure is affected by the reward/punishment framing of incentives. We find that individuals characterized by a high degree of risk aversion perform worse under time pressure. Nonetheless, when facing a penalty incentive scheme these individuals are more likely to choose to work with strict term limits, suggesting that penalty contracts might generate adverse selection problems.
Does Reminding of Behavioural Biases Increase Returns from Financial Trading? A Field Experiment (with Maria De Paola and Fabio Piluso, 2020, International Journal of Economics and Finance, 12(2), pp. 1-21) [link]
Nudge policies are interventions that aim to guide the individual to behave according to the policy’s objectives without changing the option set or economic incentives. We ran a field experiment to investigate whether nudge policies, consisting in behavioural insight messaging, help to improve performance in financial trading. Our experiment involved students enrolled in a financial trading course in an Italian University who were invited to trade on Borsa Italiana’s virtual platform. Students were randomly assigned to a control group and a treatment group. Treated students received a message reminding them of the existence of behavioural biases in financial trading. We find that treated students significantly improve the performance of their portfolio. Several behaviours may explain the increase in performance. We find evidence pointing to a reduction in the home and status quo biases for risk averse nudged participants.
Incentive Schemes and Peer Effects on Risk Behaviour: an Experiment (2019, Theory and Decision, 87(4), pp.473-495) [link]
This paper studies whether incentivizing performance with competition and cooperation-based incentive schemes, rather than individual compensation, affects peer effects on subsequent risk behaviour. We run a laboratory experiment in which we introduce three different compensation schemes—piece rate, the equal-split-sharing-rule and a tournament—associated with a real effort task and we measure risk behaviour both before and after the effort task. We find that competition more than halves peer influence on risk behaviour compared with piece-rate compensation and in some specifications produces negative peer effects. Competition also significantly reduces an individual’s feeling of attachment to their peers and self-reported peer influence.
Free-riding and Knowledge Spillovers in Teams. The Role of Social Ties (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2019, European Economic Review, 112, pp.74-90) [link]
We investigate whether and how social ties affect performance in teams by implementing a field experiment in which a sample of undergraduate students are randomly assigned either to teams composed by friends or to teams composed by individuals not linked by friendship relationships. Students undertake an intermediate exam divided into two parts: one graded on the basis of individual performance and the other graded on the basis of team performance. We find that students assigned to socially connected teams perform significantly better than control students in both the team part and the individual part of the exam, suggesting that social ties are relevant both for solving free-riding problems and for inducing knowledge spillovers among teammates. The positive effect of friendship persists over time: treated students obtain better grades also after the conclusion of the experiment.
The Adverse Consequences of Tournaments: Evidence from a Field Experiment (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2018, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 151, pp.1-18) [link]
We ran a field experiment to investigate whether competing in rank-order tournaments with different prize spreads affects individual performance. Our experiment involved students from an Italian University who took an exam that was partly evaluated on the basis of relative performance. Students were matched in pairs on the basis of their high school grades and each pair was randomly assigned to one of three different tournaments. Random assignment neutralizes selection effects and allows us to investigate if larger prize spreads increase individual effort. We do not find any positive effect of larger prizes on performance. Furthermore, we show that the effect of prize spreads on students’ performance depends on their degree of risk-aversion: competing in tournaments with large spreads negatively affects the performance of risk-averse students, while it does not produce any effect on students who are more prone to taking risks.
Competition and Subsequent Risk-Taking Behaviour: Heterogeneity across Gender and Outcomes (with Antonio Filippin, 2018, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 75, pp.84-94) [link]
This paper studies if competition affects subsequent risk-taking behaviour by means of a laboratory experiment that manipulates the degree of competitiveness of the environment under equivalent monetary incentives. We find that competition increases risk aversion, especially for males, but not in a significant manner. When conditioning on the outcome, we find that males become significantly more risk averse after losing the tournament than after randomly earning the same low payoff. In contrast, males do not become more risk-seeking after winning the tournament, while females’ average risk-taking behaviour is unaffected by tournament participation and outcomes. Our findings can be rationalized using the results of the literature on self-serving attribution.
Peer Effects On Risk Behaviour: The Importance Of Group Identity (2017, Experimental Economics, 20(1), pp.100-129) [link]
This paper investigates whether and to what extent group identity plays a role in peer effects on risk behaviour. We run a laboratory experiment in which different levels of group identity are induced through different matching protocols (random or based on individual painting preferences) and the possibility to interact with group members via an online chat in a group task. Risk behaviour is measured by using the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task and peer influence is introduced by giving subjects feedback regarding group members’ previous decisions. We find that subjects are affected by their peers when taking decisions and that group identity influences the magnitude of peer effects: painting preferences matching significantly reduces the heterogeneity in risk behaviour compared with random matching. On the other hand, introducing a group task has no significant effect on behaviour, possibly because interaction does not always contribute to enhancing group identity. Finally, relative riskiness within the group matters and individuals whose peers are riskier than they are take on average riskier decisions, even when controlling for regression to the mean.
Does patience matter in marriage stability? Some evidence from Italy (with Maria De Paola, 2017, Review of Economics of the Household, 15(2), pp.549-577) [link]
Time preferences can affect divorce probability by both affecting the quality of the match and affecting the spouses’ reactions to negative shocks. We analyse the relationship between time preferences and divorce decisions using data from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth, which provides a measure of time preferences based on a hypothetical financial situation in which individuals have to decide how much money to give up in order to receive a certain amount of money immediately rather than in one year’s time. By controlling for a number of individual and family characteristics, we find that impatient individuals are more likely to experience divorce. The effect is robust to different specifications of our model and is not affected by reverse causality problems. We also find that the more risk averse individuals are, the less likely they are to experience divorce.
Impatience and Academic Performance. Less effort and less ambitious goals (with Maria De Paola, 2017, Journal of Policy Modeling, 39(3), pp.443-460) [link]
Using data from a sample of Italian undergraduate students, we find a negative relationship between time preferences and academic performance. We also find that impatient students, even those who were pretty sure, at the moment of enrollment, of being able to accomplish their degree within the regular time, are more likely to drop out or to be late in their educational career. Our results do not suffer from reverse causality problems and are robust controlling for a large number of individual characteristics, such as family income, cognitive abilities and risk aversion.
Who performs better under time pressure? Results from a field experiment (with Maria De Paola, 2016, Journal of Economic Psychology, 53, pp.37-53) [link]
We investigate whether and how time pressure affects performance. We conducted a field experiment in which students from an Italian University are proposed to choose between two exam schemes: a standard scheme without time pressure and an alternative scheme consisting of two written intermediate tests, one of which to be taken under time pressure. Students deciding to sustain the alternative exam are randomly assigned to a “time pressure” and a “no time pressure” group. Students performing under time pressure at the first test perform in absence of time pressure at the second test and vice versa. We find that being exposed to time pressure exerts a negative and statistically significant impact on students’ performance. The effect is driven by a strong negative impact on females’ performance, while there is no statistically significant effect on males. Both the quantity and quality of females’ work is hampered by time pressure. Using data on students’ expectations, we also find that the effect produced by time pressure on performance was correctly perceived by students. Female students expect a lower grade when working under time pressure, while males do not. These findings contribute to explain why women tend to shy away from jobs and careers involving time pressure.
Are Females Scared of Competing with Males? Results from a Field Experiment (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2015, Economics of Education Review, vol. 48, pp.117-128) [link]
We conducted a field experiment involving 720 Italian undergraduate students to investigate the existence of gender differences in performance in competitive settings and whether performance is affected by one's opponent gender. The experimental design was aimed at neutralizing other differences in psychological attitudes, such as self-confidence and risk aversion, that are typically considered as potential explanations of gender differences in competitive environments. Students were invited to undertake a midterm exam under a tournament scheme having as a prize some bonus points to add to the final grade. Students competed in pairs of equal predicted ability but different gender composition. In a competitive setting in which risk aversion, feedback provision and self-confidence have little relevance, we find that women tend to perform similarly to men. The gender of one's competitor does not play any role in shaping students’ behavior. Men and women perform similarly both in the competitive and in the non-competitive environment.
Overconfidence, Omens and Gender Heterogeneity: Results from a Field Experiment (with Maria De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa, 2014, Journal of Economic Psychology, 45, pp.237-252) [link]
We investigate whether overconfidence is affected by superstitious beliefs and whether the effect is heterogeneous according to gender. With this aim, we run a field experiment involving about 700 Italian students. According to widespread superstitions, some numbers are considered lucky while others are thought of as unlucky. In our experiment, we exploited this by randomly assigning students to numbered seats in their written exam. At the end of the examination, we asked students the grade they expected to get. We find that students tend to be overconfident about their performance at the exam and that their overconfidence is positively affected by being assigned to a lucky number. Interestingly, males and females react differently: females’ overconfidence tends to be negatively affected when assigned to unlucky numbers, while they are not affected by being assigned to lucky numbers; males are not affected by being assigned to unlucky numbers but are more overconfident when assigned to lucky numbers.
Risk Aversion And Field Of Study Choice: The Role Of Individual Ability (with Maria De Paola, 2012, Bulletin of Economic Research, 64 (s1), pp.s193-s209) [link]
Does the choice of field of study depend on individual risk aversion? The direction of the relationship between individual risk attitudes and type of university degree chosen is potentially ambiguous. On the one hand, risk averse individuals may prefer degree courses which allow high returns in the labour market; on the other hand, if these degrees expose students to a higher probability of dropping out, those who are more risk averse may be induced to choose less challenging fields. Using data from a sample of students enrolled at a middle-sized Italian public university in 2009, we find that, controlling for a large number of individual characteristics, more risk averse students are more likely to choose any other field (Humanities, Engineering, and Sciences) rather than Social Sciences. We interpret this result bearing in mind that some of these fields, such as Humanities, involve a reduction in the risk of dropping out, while others (such as Engineering and Sciences) involve a lower risk in the labour market. It also emerges that the effect of risk aversion on degree choice is related to student ability. Risk averse students characterized by high abilities tend to prefer Engineering, while the propensity of risk averse students to enrol in Humanities decreases when ability increases, suggesting that the attention paid to labour market risks and drop-out risk varies according to student skills.