Maria Cubel

THE EFFECT OF WITHIN-GROUP INEQUALITY IN A CONFLICT AGAINST A UNITARY THREAT

Abstract A group of agents must defend their individual income from an external threat by pooling their efforts against it. The winner of this confrontation is determined by a contest success function where members’ efforts display a varying degree of complementarity. Individual effort is costly and its cost follows a convex isoelastic function. We investigate how the success of the group in the conflict and its members’ utilities vary with the degree of within-group inequality. We show that there is a natural relationship between the group’s probability of victory and the Atkinson index of inequality. If members’ efforts are complementary or the cost function convex enough, more egalitarianism within the group increases the likelihood of victory against the external threat. The opposite holds when members’ efforts are substitutes and the cost linear enough.

Strategic Voting and Happiness

In this paper we extend the research on happiness and spatial theory of voting by exploring whether strategic and sincere voting affect subjective well-being. We conduct the analysis with data on a large sample of individuals over 50 elections in 16 OECD countries. The results of the analysis show the existence of a negative effect of strategic voting on subjective well-being. In addition, the likelihood of being satisfied decreases when individuals vote strategically for a political party that wins the electoral race. Furthermore, when we analyse separately left-wing and right-wing voters, we find that the described effect holds for left-wing voters but no for right-wing voters. We discuss this evidence in the light of expressive voting theory (Hilman, 2010) and lack of empathy with future selves (Kahneman and Thaler, 1991). Our results are robust to different measures of strategic voting and subjective well-being.

Do Personality Traits Affect Productivity? Evidence from the Laboratory

While survey data supports a strong relationship between personality and labour market outcomes, the exact mechanisms behind this association remain unexplored. We take advantage of a controlled laboratory set-up to explore whether this relationship operates through productivity. Using a real-effort task, we analyse the impact of the Big Five personality traits on performance. We find that more neurotic subjects perform worse, and that more conscientious individuals perform better. These findings suggest that at least part of the effect of personality on labour market outcomes operates through productivity. In addition, we find evidence that gender and university major affect this relationship.

Do Personality Traits Affect Productivity? Evidence from the Lab

While survey data supports a strong relationship between personality and labor market outcomes, the exact mechanisms behind this association remain unexplored. In this paper, we take advantage of a controlled laboratory set-up to test whether this relationship operates through productivity, and isolate this mechanism from other channels such as bargaining ability or self-selection into jobs. Using a gender neutral real-effort task, we analyse the impact of the Big Five personality traits on performance. We find that more neurotic subjects perform worse, and that more conscientious individuals perform better. These findings are in line with previous survey studies and suggest that at least part of the effect of personality on labor market outcomes operates through productivity. In addition, we find evidence that gender and university major affect the impact of the Big Five personality traits on performance.

A Regional Approach to Income Tax Reform

Is it better to have a national income tax or a set of income taxes, different in the different regions? In this article, the authors conduct marginal analysis to determine dominance conditions on the configuration of income distributions in the regions under which small and related new regional taxes are superior to an across-the-board alternative without regard to domicile. Three cases, of lump-sum, proportional, and progressive taxes, are considered. An illustrative application to Spain confirms that the dominance tests can be successful and yields findings that may be of interest in their own right.

Progression-neutral income tax reforms and horizontal inequity

A switch from any given income tax schedule to a tax structure in which two groups of taxpayers are treated differently, each still facing the same degree of progression, can induce an increase in welfare despite causing horizontal inequity (HI). The thrust of much recent research, however, is that removing the HI from an income tax system, by replacing it with a schedule, is itself welfare improving. In this note we reconcile these results, showing that acceptance of HI can be second-best when government must operate with a limited bundle of income tax parameters.

Gender differences and stereotypes in strategic reasoning

Both authors acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation research grant ECO2012-33243 and from the Generalitat de Catalunya grant 2009SGR1051.

Difference-Form Group Contests

Contests are situations in which a set of agents compete for a valuable object, rent or award. The present paper analyzes difference-form group contests, that is, contests fought among groups and where their probability of victory depends on the difference of their effective efforts. First, we show that the non-existence of pure-strategy equilibria and the monopolization results obtained in previous analysis of difference-form contests rest critically on the assumption of a linear cost of effort. Under exponential costs, we show that pure strategy equilibria exist in a large set of cases and that more than one group can expend positive effort in equilibrium. Second, we show that inequality of valuations of victory within groups hinders their chances of prevailing in the contest. If possible; members may find beneficial to engage in progressive redistribution within their group.

Gender Differences and Stereotypes in the Beauty Contest

Recent literature has emphasized that individuals display different depths of reasoning when playing games. In this paper, we explore gender differences in strategic sophistication and study whether these differences are endogenous. We report results from two different experiments employing the beauty contest. In the first, large study, we show that females react very strongly to incentives to the extent that gender differences disappear when a monetary prize is awarded. In the second study, we use a within subject design to analyze how depth of reasoning varies with gender priming and the gender composition of the set of players. We corroborate that females display higher levels of sophistication and even overtake males when incentives are provided and gender is primed. On the other hand, males who believe that females are better in the game display higher sophistication when playing against females.

Gender, competition and performance:Evidence from real tournaments

There is a growing literature looking at how men and women respond differently to competition. We contribute to this literature by studying gender differences in performance in a high-stakes and male dominated competitive environment, expert chess tournaments. Our findings show that women underperform compared to men of the same ability and that the gender composition of games drives this effect. Using within player variation in the conditionally random gender of their opponent, we find that women earn significantly worse outcomes against male opponents. We examine the mechanisms through which this effect operates by using a unique measure of within game quality of play. We find that the gender composition effect is driven by women playing worse against men, rather than by men playing better against women. The gender of the opponent does not affect a male player’s quality of play. We also find that men persist longer against women before resigning. These results suggest that the gender composition of competitions affects the behavior of both men and women in ways that are detrimental to the performance of women. Lastly, we study the effect of competitive pressure and find that players’ quality of play deteriorates when stakes increase, though we find no differential effect over the gender composition of games.