Angela C. M. de Oliveira

Are Preferences Stable Across Domains? An Experimental Investigation of Social Preferences in the Field

Our research investigates whether social preferences are stable across contexts in the field. We build a unique data set by recruiting participants from a low-income urban neighborhood to participate in a series of laboratory experiments. Their decisions are used to demonstrate the stability of cooperative actions across multiple decision contexts. We show that choices in a laboratory VCM predict giving in donation experiments, as well as self-reported donations and volunteering outside the lab. These results have important implications for modeling a general preference for cooperation, measurable in the lab and in the field, and for public policy regarding the voluntary provision of public goods.

The Stability of Social Preferences in a Low-Income Neighborhood

We investigate whether social preferences are stable across contexts using a field population of low-income Americans. We develop and demonstrate a simplified, visually-based experimental methodology appropriate for this population. We show that choices in a laboratory public goods game predict giving in real donation experiments, as well as self-reported donations and volunteering outside the lab. At the same time, choices vary systematically by individual characteristics and decision context. Thus, our results provide evidence both for an underlying stable social preference and for the role of context in influencing the expression of that preference.

Health behavior and behavioral economics: economic preferences and physical activity stages of change in a low-income African-American community.

Purpose. To examine the relationship between physical activity stages of change and preferences for financial risk and time. Design. A cross-sectional, community-based study. Setting. A low-income, urban, African-American neighborhood. Subjects. One hundred sixty-nine adults. Measures. Self-reported physical activity stages of change—precontemplation to maintenance, objectively measured body mass index and waist circumference, and economic preferences for time and risk measured via incentivized economic experiments. Analysis. Multivariable ordered logistic regression models were used to examine the association between physical activity stages of change and economic preferences while controlling for demographic characteristics of the individuals. Results. Individuals who are more tolerant of financial risks (odds ratio [OR] = 1.31, p < .05) and whose time preferences indicate more patience (OR = 1.68, p < .01) are more likely to be in a more advanced physical activity stage (e.g., from preparation to action). The likelihood of being in the maintenance stage increases by 5.6 and 10.9 percentage points for each one-unit increase in financial risk tolerance or one-unit increase in the time preference measure, respectively. Conclusion. Greater tolerance of financial risk and more patient time preferences among this low-income ethnic minority population are associated with a more advanced physical activity stage. Further exploration is clearly warranted in larger and more representative samples.

(Im)Patience Among Adolescents: A Methodological Note

Time preference is a fundamental component of many economic models and questions of interest. Yet, elicited preferences are frequently questioned on the grounds of potentially confounding elements of the experimental design, such as trust in the experimenter. We report on a time preference experiment using a sample of 490 high school students from Houston, TX and St. Cloud, MN. We find no relationship between confidence in receiving payment from the experimenters and the intertemporal allocation decisions. However, we find an illogical result for this population: reverse hyperbolic discounting. On aggregate the students are more likely to be impatient as choices are moved further into the future. However, this aggregate result is driven by heterogeneity in the home environment: For a subset of our population, elicited time preferences reflect increasing impatience as the decisions are farther in the future: These individuals come from home environments with factors that decrease the likelihood that they will receive the later payments. Once this heterogeneity is accounted for, the population is, on average, exponentially discounting. Results indicate that caution is warranted when trying to generalize results based on the convenience sample of university undergraduates to other populations. Further, results highlight the importance of accounting for preference heterogeneity within and across samples.

Economic preferences and obesity among a low-income African American community

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the US, with a significantly higher fraction of African Americans who are obese than whites. Yet there is little understanding of why some individuals become obese while others do not. We conduct a lab-in-field experiment in a low-income African American community to investigate whether risk and time preferences play a role in the tendency to become obese. We examine the relationship between incentivized measures of risk and time preferences and weight status (BMI), and find that individuals who are more tolerant of risk are more likely to have a higher BMI. This result is driven by the most risk tolerant individuals. Patience is not independently statistically related to BMI in this sample, but those who are more risk averse and patient are less likely to be obese.

Heterogeneity in Ultimatum Bargaining: The Role of Information, Individual Characteristics, and Emotions

Individuals engage in negotiation and bargaining on a daily basis. Some of these negotiations are small and repeated (as with a spouse, friends, or coworkers) while others are larger and relatively infrequent (as with employers, suppliers, or involving a large personal purchase). In some of these negotiations, interests are in conflict, whereas in others interests are aligned. However, underlying each case, there is a surplus to be divided, and frequently each side jockeys for the largest share possible.

Common identity and the voluntary provision of public goods: An experimental investigation

We conduct a framed field experiment in two Dallas neighborhoods to examine how common identity affects individual contributions to local public goods. The participants’ common identity is primed to make neighborhood membership salient before individuals make donations to local non-profit organizations. We find that the identity treatment is sensitive to community context. It decreases the likelihood of giving in the struggling, poor neighborhood, but its impact is positive, albeit statistically insignificant, in the low- to middle-income neighborhood. In addition, the identity treatment triggers participants’ perceptions or memories of experiences with their communities which in turn lead to the treatment differences across the two communities. Our findings reveal the limitations on the power of common group identity in influencing individual economic decision making, which has been largely overlooked in the literature.

Instrumenting Beliefs in Threshold Public Goods.

Understanding the causal impact of beliefs on contributions in Threshold Public Goods (TPGs) is particularly important since the social optimum can be supported as a Nash Equilibrium and best-response contributions are a function of beliefs. Unfortunately, investigations of the impact of beliefs on behavior are plagued with endogeneity concerns. We create a set of instruments by cleanly and exogenously manipulating beliefs without deception. Tests indicate that the instruments are valid and relevant. Perhaps surprisingly, we fail to find evidence that beliefs are endogenous in either the one-shot or repeated-decision settings. TPG allocations are determined by a base contribution and beliefs in a one shot-setting. In the repeated-decision environment, once we instrument for first-round allocations, we find that second-round allocations are driven equally by beliefs and history. Moreover, we find that failing to instrument prior decisions overstates their importance.

Care Provision: An Experimental Investigation

We present lab experiments that utilize a new three-player game designed to capture key features of care provision. We discuss results from the baseline game and test two sets of treatments designed to gauge the impact of potential policy interventions. The first varies the budget subsidy provided to the care manager, and the second alters the effectiveness (or productivity) of the care worker. We find that budget subsidies increase the expenditure of the care manager only slightly. Changes in the care worker’s efficiency significantly impact the well-being of the care recipient.