David Masclet

The Dark Side of Competition for Status

Unethical behavior within organizations is not rare. We investigate experimentally the role of status-seeking behavior in sabotage and cheating activities aiming at improving one’s performance ranking in a flat-wage environment. We find that average effort is higher when individuals are informed about their relative performance. However, ranking feedback also favors disreputable behavior. Some individuals do not hesitate to incur a cost to improve their rank by sabotaging others’ work or by increasing artificially their own performance. Introducing sabotage opportunities has a strong detrimental effect on performance. Therefore, ranking incentives should be used with care. Inducing group identity discourages sabotage among peers but increases in-group rivalry. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Ostracism in work teams: a public good experiment

This paper provides an experimental examination of the effects of ostracism on cooperation. Ostracism is one of the most radical forms of peer pressure. More generally, ostracism is the exclusion of disapproved individuals from interaction with a social group. By performing a laboratory experiment involving a public good game with exclusion, the paper provides empirical evidence that threats of exclusion increase contributions. The results show that subjects exclude their peers for two reasons. Subjects are willing to punish unfair behaviors (non‐strategic reason) and expect changes in behavior in response to exclusions (strategic reason).

Punishment, inequality, and welfare: a public good experiment

This paper reports the results of an experiment that investigates the two-sided relationship between punishment and welfare. First, it contributes to the literature on the behavioral determinants of punishment by examining the role of relative income and income comparisons as a determinant of punishment in a two-stage public good game when inequality arises endogenously from the subjects’ behavior. Second, this paper investigates the impact of punishment on both absolute and relative incomes. We compare three treatments of our game. The Unequal Cost treatment replicates Fehr and Gächter (2000)’s experiment under a stranger matching protocol. The Equal Cost treatment is identical to the previous one except that the ratio between the cost of one punishment point to the punisher and its cost to the target equals one. The third treatment is similar to the second one except that a partner matching protocol is implemented in order to isolate strategic motives for punishment. Our results indicate that subjects punish even when they cannot alter the current distribution of payoffs. We also find that in all treatments, the intensity of punishment increases in the level of inter-individual inequality. Finally, despite its cost, punishment progressively improves welfare in association with a decrease in the aggregate level of inequality over time.

Do reputation feedback systems really improve trust among anonymous traders? An experimental study

Feedback systems are claimed to be a crucial component of the success of electronic marketplaces like eBay or Amazon Marketplace. This article aims to compare the effects of various feedback systems on trust between anonymous traders, through a set of experiments based on the trust game. Our results indicate that trust is significantly improved by the introduction of a reputation feedback system. However, such mechanisms are far from being perfect and are vulnerable to strategic ratings and reciprocation. Our findings indicate that some changes in rating rules may significantly improve the efficiency of feedback systems, by avoiding strategic rating or reciprocation, and hence stimulate trust and trustworthiness among traders. In particular, a system in which individuals are not informed of their partners rating decision before making their own decision provides better results, both in terms of trust and earnings.

Threat and Punishment in Public Good Experiments

Experimental studies of social dilemmas have shown that while the existence of a sanctioning institution improves cooperation within groups, it also has a detrimental impact on group earnings in the short-run. Could the introduction of pre-play threats to punish have enough of a beneficial impact on cooperation, while not incurring the cost associated with actual punishment, so that they increase overall welfare ? We report an experiment in which players can issue non-binding threats to punish others based on their contribution levels to a public good. After observing others’ actual contributions, they choose their actual punishment level. We find that threats increase the level of contributions significantly. Efficiency is improved, but only in the long run. However, the possibility of sanctioning differences between threatened and actual punishment leads to lower threats, cooperation and welfare, restoring them to levels equal to or below the levels attained in the absence of threats.

Risk aversion: an experiment with self-employed workers and salaried workers

In this article we present the results of a lottery-choice experiment to address the following questions: Do risk vary across individuals? What is the impact of context on risk aversion? The originality of this research lies in introducing variability in socio-demographic characteristics by recruiting not only students but also ‘real people’ among salaried workers and self-employed workers. Our results indicate that risk attitude strongly varies across individuals. In particular, individuals who are self employed tend to be significantly less risk averse than others. In addition, we replicated Holt and Laury (2002, 2005) and Harrison et al. (2005)’s findings that individuals tend to be more risk averse with higher payoffs. Finally, our results concerning a potential experience effect indicate the existence of a significant order effect for both treatments.

The Effect of Perfect Monitoring of Matched Income on Sales Tax Compliance: An Experimental Investigation

Tax noncompliance is a quantitatively important phenomenon that significantly affects government revenues, and thus raises challenging questions about the determinants of tax reporting and the appropriate design of a tax system. This paper provides empirical insights regarding the nature of tax noncompliance, using an experimental approach to evaluate the effects of systematic sales tax monitoring and identify the determinants of sales tax compliance. The results suggest that if perfect monitoring of a single revenue source is introduced without other complementary policies, an increase in tax revenues is not the likely outcome as evasion increases for other revenue sources. That is, the data suggest that once taxpayers have chosen their level of tax compliance, they will try to recover their losses following any policy changes, even if it implies assuming more risks.

Inequality and Inter-group Conflicts – Experimental Evidence

In this paper we experimentally investigate the relationship between inequality and conflicts, the latter taking the shape of rebellious actions. Further, our conflict experiment allows us to study whether lack of coordination or fear of retaliation may refrain individuals from rioting despite their willingness to riot. Our conflict game consists of two-stages. In a first stage, subjects play a proportional rent-seeking game to share a prize. In a second stage, players can coordinate with the other members of their group to reduce (“burn”) the other group members’ payoffs. Our treatments differ in the extent of inequality. Precisely, in the first series of treatments (called symmetric treatments), inequality only arises from different investment behaviors of players in the first stage. In a second series of treatments (called asymmetric treatments), inequality is strongly reinforced by attributing to some subjects (the advantaged group) a larger share of the price than other subjects (the disadvantaged group) for the same amount of effort. While the former refer to inequality of effort the latter is related to exogenous inequality of circumstances (bad luck). We ran these treatments under both partner and stranger matching protocol. Consistent with the assumption of inequality aversion, we observe that disadvantaged groups “burn” significantly more money than advantaged groups in the asymmetric treatment. However, we also observe that the relationship between inequality and conflicts is non-linear since the frequency of conflicts is significantly higher in the symmetric treatment where inequality is moderate compared to the asymmetric treatment where inequality is extreme. Resignation seems to be the main driving force behind this phenomenon. Our findings also shed light on the important role played by coordination.

Norm Enforcement in Social Dilemmas: An Experiment with Police Commissioners

Do individuals trained in law enforcement punish or reward differently from typical student subjects? We analyze norm enforcement behavior of newly appointed police commissioners in both a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism game and a Common Pool Resource game. Our experimental design includes treatments where a reward or sanction institution is exogenously imposed, as well as treatments with endogenous selection of the norm enforcement institution. Compared to a standard student-subject pool, police commissioners cooperate significantly more in both games. With exogenous institutions, police commissioners bear a higher burden of punishment costs than non-police subjects. When the norm enforcement institution is endogenous, all subjects vote more in favor of rewards over sanctions, but police subjects with some work experience are more likely to vote for sanctions. Police subjects also reward and sanction more than the others when the institution results from a majority vote.

Educational Attainment, Wages and Employment of Second-Generation Immigrants in France

We use data from the Trajectoires et Origines survey to analyze the labor-market outcomes of both second-generation immigrants and their French native counterparts. Second-generation immigrants have on average a lower probability of employment and lower wages than French natives. We find however considerable differences between second-generation immigrants depending on their origin: while those originating from Northern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Turkey are less likely to be employed and receive lower wages than French natives, second-generation immigrants with Asian or Southern- and Eastern-European origins do not differ significantly from their French native counterparts. The employment gap between French natives and second generation immigrants is mainly explained by differences in their education; education is also an important determinant of the ethnic wage gap. Finally we show that these differences in educational attainment are mainly explained by family background. Although the role of discrimination cannot be denied, our findings do point out the importance of family background in explaining lifelong ethnic inequalities.