Authors : Gashaw T. Abate(IFPRI) , Tanguy Bernard (BSE , Université de Bordeaux) , Joshua Deutschmann (Development Innovation Lab, University of Chicago) , Fatou Fall (LEDa-DIAL, Université Paris-Dauphine-PSL)
Abstract : Why would farmers invest in technologies that protect the health of their consumers if there are no market rewards associated with food safety? We work with a sample of small-scale groundnut farmers in Senegal, where aflatoxin contamination is a major health concern. We rely on a lab-in-the-field experiment where we elicit their willingness to pay (WTP) for aflatoxins detection in groundnut powder dedicated to their own consumption, donation to local children, or sales at a premium. We find lower WTP for donation, albeit limited to farmers with less than medial reported level of altruism. In turn, a randomly allocated information treatment on the health consequences of aflatoxins increases overall WTP for donated groundnuts and eliminates the effect of altruism.

co-écrit avec Brice Corgnet and Camille Cornand

Résumé: 

Since Barro (2006), the macro-finance literature has shown that accounting for rare macroeconomic disasters helps explain various long-lasting empirical puzzles in financial asset markets through the critical role of disaster risk perceptions. However, individual macroeconomic disaster risk perceptions and their consequences for financial investment have never been directly measured at the microeconomic level.

To fill this gap and investigate whether communication on macroeconomic disaster risk can affect individual perceptions and financial investment decisions, we ran an online experiment on 345 French finance and macroeconomics professionals. We randomly assigned participants to three distinct informational treatments about the past frequency of macroeconomic disasters in a given historical sample (low-precision treatment, high-precision treatment, and salient treatment). We asked participants to estimate this frequency prior and posterior to the treatment and to allocate a sum of money between a risk-free asset and a risky asset whose returns depend on the possibility of a macroeconomic disaster.

We find that, on average, participants significantly overestimate the past frequency of macroeconomic disasters before information provision. At the intensive margin, participants decrease their frequency estimate and uncertainty and increase investment in the risky asset following the treatments. At the extensive margin, the high-precision treatment increases the probability of updating the prior relative to the two other treatments. We also investigate the role of individual variables such as gender, financial literacy score, confidence in prior estimate, and sector of activity.

Abstract: We investigate individuals’ food choices at the restaurant with information about the environmental impact of the meals. We ask whether information about CO2 emissions of the main meal on a restaurant menu alters the choice of guests between beef and sea trout under high or low social influence of other guests around the table. We followed a 2 x 2 design differentiated by the information given or not and the high or low social influence. For guests with the information, they could read on the menu that consuming beef participates more to climate change than consuming sea trout; guests without information had only the meals presented on the menu. For guests with the high social influence, they were allowed to discuss before making their choice of the main meal whereas for guests with the low social influence, they had to choose their main meal without communication with other people around the table. We also asked guests to reply to a short questionnaire about their meal preferences and their expectations regarding other guests’ food choice of the main meal, i.e. the social norm. Experiments were run at the Living lab of the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, France, between April and June 2022. In total, 486 guests participated. The results show that the guests’ normative beliefs about the choice of fish as being socially acceptable increase when they receive the information about CO2 emissions which in turn significantly affects the choice of fish. The fish is slightly more chosen when the guests receive the environmental information and are allowed to discuss before ordering, but this effect is not significant. 

Abstract: I analyze Dutch panel data that contains rich information on voting, political opinions, and personality traits. I show that “adversarial” economic preferences – competitiveness and negative reciprocity – but also “prosocial” preferences including trust and altruism are strong predictors of political preferences, with predictive power similar to household income. Past studies have shown that standard personality traits are reliably linked to political preferences. I replicate these associations and show that competitiveness and social preferences predict voting independently from – and often with larger effect sizes than – these other traits. The complex Dutch party landscape allows me to go further than a simple left-right comparison to show that associations between individual traits and political preferences are non-linear along the left-right spectrum. Competitiveness predicts voting for center-right, economically liberal parties whereas social preferences are stronger predictors for voting for the populist far right. Put differently, competitiveness predicts voting for parties that are economically conservative whereas negative reciprocity and low pro-sociality predict voting for parties that are socially conservative.

Co-écrit avec Laurent Denant-Boèmont

Abstract:
We investigate how ego depletion might impact cooperation levels for individuals. To this end, we propose a theoretical model in which an individual contributes to a public good in a VCM (Voluntary Contribution Mechanism) game after having been exposed to ego depletion. This model first aims at specifying the main parameters of the depletion function at the individual level and, second, to provide a theoretical relationship between individual characteristics of the depletion function and the contribution level. We use this model to build an economic experiment where participants enter a VCM game after having been exposed to ego depletion. Our experimental treatments vary in the degree of ego depletion to isolate the effect of this latter on contribution. First experimental results highlights the impact of self control in the level of contribution in a one-shot public good game. In particular, we observe a strong and negative relationship between ego-depletion and the level of cooperation while the initial level of willpower fails to explain the level of contribution.

Abstract:
The study of gender differences in competitiveness has been a widely explored topic in experimental economics, with a focus on its contribution to the gender wage gap. Recent research in psychology has employed virtual reality (VR) to manipulate individuals' embodiment in bodies with different characteristics, including gender. This has been shown to alter the perception of the self, with participants who underwent a 'gender swap' via VR identifying more with the opposite gender and exhibiting self-attribution of traits stereotypically associated with that gender, such as competitiveness. To test whether these self-reported results on attitudes extend to behavior, I examine the impact of such a virtual “gender swap” on selection into competitive environments in the lab. Although the VR intervention impacted several secondary outcomes, including overconfidence, it did not have a significant effect on the gender gap in tournament selection. The results have implications for the study of embodiment interventions and gender differences in competition.

Coécrit avec Mathieu Lambotte, Anna Risch et Sandrine Mathy (GAEL)

Résumé : We investigate the role of peer effects in the workplace on individual choices of active transportation mode. We collect original data through an online survey on networks and sustainable behaviors among 334 individuals working in ten laboratories of the University of Grenoble Alps in February 2020. We apply linear and non-linear models of peer effects on active modal choice, untangling the role of conformism and strategic complementarity in social influence. We show that given our data, a linear local-average specification is the preferred empirical model of peer effects and we estimate strong and significant endogenous peer effects.

Résumé : We experimentally study how individuals read strategically-transmitted information when they have preferences over what they will learn. Subjects play disclosure games in which Receivers should interpret messages skeptically. We vary whether the state that Senders communicate about is ego-relevant or neutral for Receivers, and whether skeptical beliefs are aligned or not with what Receivers prefer believing. Compared to neutral settings, skepticism is significantly lower when it is self-threatening, and not enhanced when it is self-serving. These results shed light on a new channel that individuals can use to protect their beliefs in communication situation: they exercise skepticism in a motivated way, that is, in a way that depends on the desirability of the conclusions that skeptical inferences lead to.

Co-auteurs : Vincent Lenglin (Anthropo-Lab, Université Catholique de Lille), Joel Santos (IESEG, EDHEC)

Co auteurs : Loukas Balafoutas et Brit Grosskopf (University of Exeter, United Kingdom)

en collaboration avec Sofiia Mun (Paris School of Economics)

en collaboration avec Vincent Teixeira

co-écrit avec Pierre Fleckinger et Christian Waibel.

écrit en collaboration avec Arthur Attema, Jocelyn Raude, Valérie Seror, The COCONEL Group

co-écrit avec Loukas Balafoutas, Mehdi Feizi, et Björn Vollan.

co-écrit avec Noémi Berlin

co-écrit avec Johanna Etner et Meglena Jeleva

co-écrit avec Patrick Roger et Marc Willinger

co-écrit avec B. Ouvrard, A. Reynaud et L.Tuffery

co-écrit avec Raphael Soubeyran et Nicolas Querou

Co-écrit avec Fabienne Llense et Jekaterina Dmitrijeva

Price discrimination based on consumers' personal data has become common practice in many markets. We analyze the willingness to share personal data when this data is used for pricing in subsequent markets. In a laboratory experiment, participants can sell a bundle of personal data. Participants are categorized based on the content of their personal data and receive category-dependent payoffs in a subsequent stage. The experimental variations change category-dependent the payoff structure. We find no effect of subsequent price discrimination on the general willingness to sell personal data. A significant change in the price of personal data is only observed under strong negative price discrimination. Furthermore, we find important gender differences in data selling price adjustments and the role of underlying privacy concerns.

co-écrit avec Lydia Ashton (University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wisconsin Institute for Discovery) et Emmanuel Kemel (HEC Business School Paris & GREGHEC, CNRS)

Classic economic theory focuses on static and stable preferences. However, there is growing evidence that cognitive, emotional and visceral states (e.g. stress, hunger) can mediate behavioral biases and shape preferences (DellaVigna, 2009). In particular, Symmonds & al. (2010) and Levy & al. (2013) provide evidence that risk attitudes fluctuate with metabolic states. In this paper, we follow this stream of research and propose an experimental design with a specific hunger manipulation mechanism and an original risk attitude elicitation tool that allows parametric estimation of the components of Prospect Theory (PT) by using a convex budget line (CBL) allocation methodology (Choi & al., 2007).

Participants (N=107, Xlab Berkeley) were required to fast for at least three hours before the experiment and completed a high-protein shake tasting activity before/after (randomly assigned) the risk attitude elicitation questionnaire. Our results suggest a limited impact of hunger on the utility function and loss aversion parameters. However, we find that hungry (fasting) participants display significantly more risk aversion (curvature of the utility function) and probability distortion (inverse S shape of the probability weighting function) than the satiated participants. These results are consistent with and extend the existing empirical evidence on satiation and risk attitudes and feed the debate on the impact of hunger on economic decision

co-écrit avec Pierpaolo Battigalli (Bocconi University and IGIER, Milan) & Rosemarie Nagel (ICREA, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona GSE)

- de 10h00 à 11h00

Marie Pierre Dargnies (Université Paris Dauphine) présentera un protocole expérimental sur le thème :

"Speed and information in financial trading: Experimental design"

- de 11h00 à 12h15

Léontine Goldzahl (Edhec Business School) présentera un article intitule:

"Health Insurance decision: a theoretical and experimental investigation"

avec David Crainich (CNRS, IESEF School of Management), , Florence Jusot (Université Paris Dauphine, PSL), Doriane Mignon (Université Paris Dauphine, PSL)

Béatrice Boulu-Reshef, Graciela Kuechle, Luise Rohland

Entrepreneurs may differentiate their ventures and attract investments by advertising that their firm produces positive externalities for society. Such signaling of entrepreneurs’ trustworthiness may be a prevalent practice in these investment opportunities which are casually referred to as “impact investment’’ by practitioners. This paper investigates this possible signaling by studying the interplay of altruistic, fiscal, and reputational motives that characterizes these investments in a laboratory experiment. In the experiment, the investor may transfer money to the entrepreneur, who may then invest some, all or none of this money onto a conventional investment opportunity or an impact investment opportunity involving a spillover, and then decide whether or not to transfer some of the funds back. Entrepreneurs choose a type of investment and their choice is visible to the investors. The results are that the choice alone of an impact project does not increase investors’ transfers to impact investments but a higher spillover does as long as the tax from possible gains is not too high. Pro-social entrepreneurs do not announce higher rates of spillovers. In the presence of tax, entrepreneurs internalize that a too high spillover could scare away investors. The experiment shows that the presence of impact investments helps investors coordinate onto different investment types. It identifies the mechanisms behind investors believing that socially-oriented entrepreneurs will be more trustworthy. Specifically, as investors’ transfers react to the effective societal impact and not to the mere project type, making that quantitative information visible allows investors to differentiate between investment opportunities.

We investigate the role of preferences for risk on health and sexual behaviours of 805 female sex workers in Senegal, of whom 441 were surveyed twice at a two-year interval. Risk preferences were measured using simple incentivised risk elicitation tasks as well as domain specific risk-taking scales. We find that the experimental measure was poorly correlated with self-reported measures. We further find that risk preferences were highly stable across domains and fairly stable over time. Our main result indicates that risk preferences measured in the lab are a main predictor of sex workers' health and behaviours. We find that risk averse sex workers demand more preventive services and are less likely to engage in risky sex and, as a result, are less likely to be infected with sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. Hence, our results conrm the role of risk preferences in the spread of HIV/AIDS epidemic.

En collaboration avec D.A. Regier et V. Watson

Co-écrit avec MA Diaye et S. Pekovic