Mission, Motivation, and the Active Decision to Work for a Social Cause
Sabrina Jeworrek, Vanessa Mertins
Abstract
The mission of a job does not only affect the type of worker attracted to an organisation, but may also provide incentives to an existing workforce. We conducted a natural field experiment with 267 short-time workers and randomly allocated them to either a prosocial or a commercial job. Our data suggest that the mission of a job itself has a performance enhancing motivational impact on particular individuals only, i.e., workers with a prosocial attitude. However, the mission is very important if it has been actively selected. Those workers who have chosen to contribute to a social cause outperform the ones randomly assigned to the same job by about 15 percent. This effect seems to be a universal phenomenon which is not driven by information about the alternative job, the choice itself or a particular subgroup.
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Predicting Free-riding in a Public Goods Game – Analysis of Content and Dynamic Facial Expressions in Face-to-Face Communication
Dmitri Bershadskyy, Ehsan Othman, Frerk Saxen
IWH Discussion Papers,
Nr. 9,
2019
Abstract
This paper illustrates how audio-visual data from pre-play face-to-face communication can be used to identify groups which contain free-riders in a public goods experiment. It focuses on two channels over which face-to-face communication influences contributions to a public good. Firstly, the contents of the face-to-face communication are investigated by categorising specific strategic information and using simple meta-data. Secondly, a machine-learning approach to analyse facial expressions of the subjects during their communications is implemented. These approaches constitute the first of their kind, analysing content and facial expressions in face-to-face communication aiming to predict the behaviour of the subjects in a public goods game. The analysis shows that verbally mentioning to fully contribute to the public good until the very end and communicating through facial clues reduce the commonly observed end-game behaviour. The length of the face-to-face communication quantified in number of words is further a good measure to predict cooperation behaviour towards the end of the game. The obtained findings provide first insights how a priori available information can be utilised to predict free-riding behaviour in public goods games.
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Asset Allocation in Bankruptcy
Shai B. Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Benjamin Iverson
Journal of Finance,
Nr. 1,
2019
Abstract
This paper investigates the consequences of liquidation and reorganization on the allocation and subsequent utilization of assets in bankruptcy. Using the random assignment of judges to bankruptcy cases as a natural experiment that forces some firms into liquidation, we find that the long-run utilization of assets of liquidated firms is lower relative to assets of reorganized firms. These effects are concentrated in thin markets with few potential users and in areas with low access to finance. These findings suggest that when search frictions are large, liquidation can lead to inefficient allocation of assets in bankruptcy.
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Banks Response to Higher Capital Requirements: Evidence from a Quasi-natural Experiment
Reint E. Gropp, Thomas Mosk, Steven Ongena, Carlo Wix
Review of Financial Studies,
Nr. 1,
2019
Abstract
We study the impact of higher capital requirements on banks’ balance sheets and their transmission to the real economy. The 2011 EBA capital exercise is an almost ideal quasi-natural experiment to identify this impact with a difference-in-differences matching estimator. We find that treated banks increase their capital ratios by reducing their risk-weighted assets, not by raising their levels of equity, consistent with debt overhang. Banks reduce lending to corporate and retail customers, resulting in lower asset, investment, and sales growth for firms obtaining a larger share of their bank credit from the treated banks.
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Taken by Storm: Business Financing and Survival in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
Emek Basker, Javier Miranda
Journal of Economic Geography,
Nr. 6,
2018
Abstract
We use Hurricane Katrina’s damage to the Mississippi coast in 2005 as a natural experiment to study business survival in the aftermath of a capital-destruction shock. We find very low survival rates for businesses that incurred physical damage, particularly for small firms and less-productive establishments. Conditional on survival, larger and more-productive businesses that rebuilt their operations hired more workers than their smaller and less-productive counterparts. Auxiliary evidence from the Survey of Business Owners suggests that the differential size effect is tied to the presence of financial constraints, pointing to a socially inefficient level of exits and to distortions of allocative efficiency in response to this negative shock. Over time, the size advantage disappeared and market mechanisms seem to prevail.
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Does it Payoff to Research Economics? A Tale of Citation, Knowledge and Economic Growth in Transition Countries
Dejan Kovač, Boris Podobnik, Nikol Scrbec
Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications,
September
2018
Abstract
There are many economic theories that promote human capital as a key driver of a country’s economic growth, but it is challenging to test this theory empirically on a country level and causally interpret the coefficients due to several identification problems. We tried to answer this particular question by using a quasi-natural experiment that happened quarter century ago – the fall of communist block in Eastern Europe. We use a shock to a particular scientific field – economics, to test whether the future investment into that particular field resulted in increased welfare and economic growth. The economics paradigm that was governing all of the communist block ceased to exist. Human capital depreciated over night and all communist countries had to transit from planned economy to a market economy. In the following years countries had to adapt to market economy through additional investment in human capital and research. We find that countries which lack both of the two fourth mentioned components had 25 years later a relatively lower economic growth and wealth. Unlike economics, other fields such as physics and medicine did not go through the same process so we use them as a placebo effect for our study. We find that the relative ratio of citations between economics and physics in post-communist countries is increasing only 15 years after the “paradigm” shock which gives a suggestive evidence that timing of investment into particular scientific field matters the most.
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31.07.2018 • 16/2018
Fairness lohnt sich doch
Wenn Betriebe willkürlich den Lohn kürzen, sinken Motivation und Produktivität der Beschäftigten – klar. Weniger offensichtlich hingegen: Beschäftigte werden auch dann unproduktiver, wenn nicht sie, sondern die Kolleginnen und Kollegen unfair behandelt werden. Das stellte jetzt eine Forschungsgruppe um Sabrina Jeworrek am Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH) fest.
Sabrina Jeworrek
Lesen
Indirekte Effekte von als unfair wahrgenommenem Arbeitgeberverhalten auf die Produktivität von Beschäftigten
Sabrina Jeworrek
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
Nr. 3,
2018
Abstract
Jede Organisation, die darüber nachdenkt zu restrukturieren, Löhne zu kürzen oder Angestellte zu entlassen, sollte auch über mögliche Reaktionen der persönlich nicht betroffenen Arbeitnehmer nachdenken. Dieser Beitrag präsentiert Ergebnisse eines Feldexperiments. Es offenbart, dass die als unfair wahrgenommene Handlung des Arbeitgebers – in diesem Fall die Entlassung von Arbeitskollegen – die anschließende Produktivität der nicht direkt betroffenen Arbeitskräfte mindert. Als Teil des Experiments antizipierten erfahrene Personalmanager zwar im Durchschnitt erfolgreich die Konsequenzen unfairen Arbeitgeberverhaltens auf nicht betroffene Arbeitnehmer, einzeln lagen sie jedoch oft daneben.
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19.03.2018 • 4/2018
Wo Ökonomen anders ticken
Menschen mit ökonomischer Bildung reagieren stärker auf wirtschaftliche Anreize – und zwar in positiver und negativer Hinsicht, wie Dmitri Bershadskyy vom Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH) herausfand: Zu Beginn seines Laborexperiments waren Ökonomen zwar bereit, mehr Geld für ein öffentliches Gut auszugeben als Nicht-Ökonomen und dieses soziale Verhalten auch länger beizubehalten. Zum Ende des Experiments hin waren sie aber auch die größten Trittbrettfahrer.
Dmitri Bershadskyy
Lesen
Bottom-up or Direct? Forecasting German GDP in a Data-rich Environment
Katja Heinisch, Rolf Scheufele
Empirical Economics,
Nr. 2,
2018
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate whether there are benefits in disaggregating GDP into its components when nowcasting GDP. To answer this question, we conduct a realistic out-of-sample experiment that deals with the most prominent problems in short-term forecasting: mixed frequencies, ragged-edge data, asynchronous data releases and a large set of potential information. We compare a direct leading indicator-based GDP forecast with two bottom-up procedures—that is, forecasting GDP components from the production side or from the demand side. Generally, we find that the direct forecast performs relatively well. Among the disaggregated procedures, the production side seems to be better suited than the demand side to form a disaggregated GDP nowcast.
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