Gerhard Riener

Tangible Temptation in the Social Dilemma: Cash, cooperation, and self-control

The social dilemma may contain, within the individual, a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and better judgment to cooperate. Examining the argument from the perspective of temptation, we pair the public good game with treatments that vary the degree to which money is abstract (merely numbers on-screen) or tangible (tokens or cash). We also include psychometric measures of self-control and impulsivity. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find in the treatments that render money more tangible a stronger positive association between cooperation and self-control—and a stronger negative association between cooperation and impulsivity. Our results shed light on the conditions under which self-control matters for cooperation.

Sorting through affirmative action: Three field experiments in Colombia

The use of affirmative action policies to promote female employment remains debated. Do affirmative action policies attract female applicants, and does that come at the expense of deterring highly qualified male applicants? In three field experiments in Colombia, we compare job seekers who are informed of affirmative action selection criteria before they apply with those who are told after applying. We find that the gains in attracting female applicants far outweigh the losses in male applicants. Moreover, our results indicate that affirmative action does not decrease the quality of the top 15th percentile of the pool of applicants.

Inequality and mobility of household incomes in Europe: evidence from the ECHP

In this article we want to shed light on two aspects of income mobility: relative total income mobility using the estimator by Fields and Ok (1999) and equalization of long-run incomes measured by the index of Fields (2009). The cross country comparison shows a negative relationship between total relative mobility and long-run income equalization, this result is contrary to the intuition given by Shorrocks (1978a) who stated that higher relative mobility will cause higher equalization of incomes when the accounting period is extended.

Explaining Gender Differences in Competitiveness: Testing a Theory on Gender-Task Stereotypes

We examine an explanation for differences of self selection into competitive environments between men and women: gender-task stereotypes. Via data from a laboratory and a framed field experiment we test a recent model on stereotyping. Therefore, we contrast genders’ competitiveness between three tasks, two of which are male-connotated and one of which is not strongly associated with gender. An indirect test ensures that our quantitative and our sports task are stereotypically male, while for the verbal task concerning gender performance are absent. Controlling for potential confounds, we find that women self-select significantly less into competition against men only such tasks which are stereotypically male. In addition, we show that these stereotypes not only have consequences for the self selection into payment regimes, but also, for instance, for the selection of partners under the examined payment regimes. Overall, our results imply that the existence of gender connotations of tasks triggers significant gender effects with respect to different dimensions such as competitiveness, performance or partner choice. In particular, our experimental analysis strongly supports the underlying theory on stereotypes.

Of the Stability of Partnerships When Individuals Have Outside Options, or Why Allowing Exit is Inefficient

Should people be allowed to leave joint projects freely or should they be deterred from breaking off? This depends on why people stop collaborating and whether they have good reasons to do so. We explore the factors that lead to the breakdown of partnerships by studying a public good game with imperfect public monitoring and an exit option. In our experiment, subjects were assigned a partner with whom they could contribute over several periods to a public good with stochastic outcomes. They could choose in each period between participating in the public project or working on their own. We find there was excessive exit especially because subjects over-estimated the likelihood their partner would leave. Treatments with high barriers to exit generated higher welfare overall as they fostered stability and prevented inefficient breakdowns in relationships. There were differences across treatments in the intensity with which different factors drove the choice to work alone. Differences in expected payoffs between independent and group work were more important as a driver of exit in treatments with low barriers to exit. The intensity of other factors was more constant across treatments, including whether the common project failed in the previous period, the belief that ones partner did not want to maintain the partnership and the belief that he exerted less effort than oneself.