Interdisciplinary Public Policy Mainz

Public institutions can only use their various policy instruments productively if they are able to adequately assess the effect they have on human behavior. Thus, the design of effective institutions and policies requires not only an understanding of the relevant and often interdependent social, economic, political, and legal contexts and mechanisms but it also requires a deep knowledge about how human beings make decisions. In order to obtain the necessary insights, the Interdisciplinary Public Policy (IPP) Research Unit constituted at JGU in 2014 incorporates a number of different disciplines: economics, business administration, computer science, political science, sociology, communicatio…

Ambient Temperature, Social Perception and Social Behavior

2020

The literature suggests that human perception and behavior vary with physical temperature. We provide an experimental test of how different ambient temperature conditions impact social behavior and social perception: Subjects went through a series of tasks measuring various aspects of social behavior and perception under three temperature conditions (cold vs. optimal vs. warm). Despite well-established findings on temperature effects, our data suggest that physical temperature has no relevant influence on social behavior and social perception. We corroborate our finding of a null effect by the use of equivalence testing and provide a discussion in the light of recent failed replication atte…

Expectations as Reference Points: Field Evidence from Professional Soccer

2015

We show that professional soccer players and their coaches exhibit reference-dependent behavior during matches. Controlling for the state of the match and for unobserved heterogeneity, we show on a minute-by-minute basis that players breach the rules of the game, measured by the referee’s assignment of cards, significantly more often if their teams are behind the expected match outcome, measured by preplay betting odds of large professional bookmakers. We further show that coaches implement significantly more offensive substitutions if their teams are behind expectations. Both types of behaviors impair the expected ultimate match outcome of the team, which shows that our findings do not si…

Do Children Cooperate Conditionally? Adapting the Strategy Method for First-Graders

2018

We develop a public goods game (PGG) to measure cooperation and conditional cooperation in young children. Our design addresses several obstacles in adapting simultaneous and sequential PGGs to children who are not yet able to read or write, do not possess advanced abilities to calculate payoffs, and only have a very limited attention span at their disposal. It features the combination of haptic offline explanation, fully standardized audiovisual instructions, computerized choices based on touch-screens, and a suitable incentive scheme. Applying our experimental protocol to a sample of German first-graders, we find that already 6-year-olds cooperate conditionally and that the relative frequ…

The many faces of human sociality: uncovering the distribution and stability of social preferences

2018

There is vast heterogeneity in the human willingness to weigh others' interests in decision making. This heterogeneity concerns the motivational intricacies as well as the strength of other-regarding behaviors, and raises the question how one can parsimoniously model and characterize heterogeneity across several dimensions of social preferences while still being able to predict behavior over time and across situations. We tackle this task with an experiment and a structural model of preferences that allows us to simultaneously estimate outcome-based and reciprocity-based social preferences. We find that non-selfish preferences are the rule rather than the exception. Neither at the level of …

Strategic Responses: A Survey Experiment on Opposition to Pension Reforms*

2013

The responses given in opinion polls on future policy reforms reflect both subjective expectations and preferences. We disentangle these factors using data from a controlled survey experiment conducted in Germany. At the time of the experiment, an increased retirement age had been proposed as part of a pension reform. Thus, the survey respondents faced an incentive to give biased responses. By understating their expected work ability at the age of retirement, they could make the increase of the retirement age a less attractive policy option. We find evidence for such strategic response behavior, and this strategic bias appears to be stronger in former communist East Germany.

How Do Judgmental Overconfidence and Overoptimism Shape Innovative Activity?

2013

Recent field evidence suggests a positive link between overconfidence and innovative activities. In this paper we argue that the connection between overconfidence and innovation is more complex than the previous literature suggests. In particular, we show theoretically and experimentally that different forms of overconfidence may have opposing effects on innovative activity. While overoptimism is positively associated with innovation, judgmental overconfidence is negatively linked to innovation. Our results indicate that future research is well advised to take into account that the relationship between innovation and overconfidence may crucially depend on what type of overconfidence is most…

What determines the willingness to sanction violations of newly introduced social norms: Personality traits or economic preferences? evidence from th…

2021

Abstract Social norms govern human behavior and usually change slowly over time. While individuals’ willingness to sanction others is decisive for the enforcement of social norms and thus social stability, little is known about individual sanctioning behavior related to newly introduced social norms. During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have used various tools to rapidly and actively introduce the new norm of wearing a face mask; this offers a unique setting to study the determinants of individuals’ willingness to sanction a cooperation norm. In a nationwide online survey in Germany, we find that higher levels of conscientiousness and neuroticism, but none of the economic preferences (…

How Do Judgmental Overconfidence and Overoptimism Shape Innovative Activity?

2021

Recent field evidence suggests a positive link between overconfidence and innovative activities. In this paper we argue that the connection between overconfidence and innovation is more complex than the previous literature suggests. In particular, we show theoretically and experimentally that different forms of overconfidence may have opposing effects on innovative activity. While overoptimism is positively associated with innovation, judgmental overconfidence is negatively linked to innovation. Our results indicate that future research is well advised to take into account that the relationship between innovation and overconfidence may crucially depend on what type of overconfidence is most…

Assessing statistical significance in multivariable genome wide association analysis

2016

Motivation: Although Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) genotype a very large number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), the data are often analyzed one SNP at a time. The low predictive power of single SNPs, coupled with the high significance threshold needed to correct for multiple testing, greatly decreases the power of GWAS. Results: We propose a procedure in which all the SNPs are analyzed in a multiple generalized linear model, and we show its use for extremely high-dimensional datasets. Our method yields P-values for assessing significance of single SNPs or groups of SNPs while controlling for all other SNPs and the family wise error rate (FWER). Thus, our method tests whe…

Temptation and commitment in the laboratory

2010

Temptation and self-control in intertemporal choice environments are receiving increasing attention in the theoretical economics literature. Nevertheless, there remains a scarcity of empirical evidence from controlled environments informing behavior under repeated temptations. This is unfortunate in light of the fact that in many natural environments, the same temptation must be repeatedly resisted. This paper fills that gap by reporting data from a novel laboratory study of economic decisions under repeat temptations. Subjects are repeatedly offered an option with instantaneous benefit that also entails a substantial reduction to overall earnings. We show that this option is "tempting" in …

Motivating Low-Achievers—Relative Performance Feedback in Primary Schools

2021

Abstract Relative performance feedback (RPF) has often been shown to improve effort and performance in the workplace and educational settings. Yet, many studies also document substantial negative effects of RPF, in particular for low-achievers. We study a novel type of RPF designed to overcome these negative effects of RPF on low-achievers by scoring individual performance improvements. With a sample of 400 children, we conduct a class-wise randomized-controlled trial using an e-learning software in regular teaching lessons in primary schools. We demonstrate that this type of RPF significantly increases motivation, effort, and performance in math for low-achieving children, without hurting …

Participation Costs for Responders Can Reduce Rejection Rates in Ultimatum Bargaining

2008

This paper reports data from an ultimatum mini-game in which responders first had to choose whether or not to participate. Participation was costly, but the participation cost was smaller than the minimum payoff that a responder could guarantee himself in the ultimatum game. Compared to a standard treatment, we find that the rejection rate of unfavorable offers is significantly reduced when participation is costly. A possible explanation based on cognitive dissonance is offered.

How individual characteristics shape the structure of social networks

2015

Abstract We study how students’ social networks emerge by documenting systematic patterns in the process of friendship formation of incoming students; these students all start out in a new environment and thus jointly create a new social network. As a specific novelty, we consider cooperativeness, time and risk preferences – elicited experimentally – together with factors like socioeconomic and personality characteristics. We find a number of robust predictors of link formation and of the position within the social network (local and global network centrality). In particular, cooperativeness has a complex association with link formation. We also find evidence for homophily along several dim…

Multiplicity- and dependency-adjusted p-values for control of the family-wise error rate

2016

Abstract Under the multiple testing framework, we propose the multiplicity- and dependency-adjustment method (MADAM) which transforms test statistics into adjusted p -values for control of the family-wise error rate. For demonstration, we apply the MADAM to data from a genetic association study.

Distinguishing Trust from Risk: An Anatomy of the Investment Game

2009

The role of trust in promoting economic activity and societal development has received considerable academic attention by social scientists. A popular way to measure trust at the individual level is the so-called “investment game” (Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe, 1995). It has been widely noted, however, that risk attitudes can also affect decisions in this game, and thus in principle confound inferences about trust. We provide novel evidence shedding light on the role of risk attitudes for trusting decisions. To the best of our knowledge our data are the first rigorous evidence that (i) aggregate investment distributions differ significantly between trust and risk environments, and (ii) risk a…

Correction to: The Many Faces of Human Sociality: Uncovering the Distribution and Stability of Social Preferences

2019

Self-regulation Training and Job Search Behavior: A Natural Field Experiment Within an Active Labor Market Program

2019

Recent evidence suggests that self-regulation abilities play an important role for the job finding success of unemployed persons. We conduct a randomized controlled trial embedded in an established labor market reactivation program to examine the effect of a self-regulation training on job search effort of long-term unemployed participants. Our treatment involves teaching a self-regulation strategy based on mental contrasting with implementation intentions. We find that the treatment has a positive effect on the quality of application documents as well as on the probability of participants submitting their documents on time. However, we do not find a significant positive effect on labor mar…

The Impact of Working Memory Training on Children’s Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills

2020

Working memory capacity is thought to play an important role for a wide range of cognitive and noncognitive skills such as fluid intelligence, math, reading, the inhibition of pre-potent impulses or more general self-regulation abilities. Because these abilities substantially affect individuals' life trajectories in terms of health, education, and earnings, the question of whether working memory (WM) training can improve them is of considerable importance. However, whether WM training leads to improvements in these far-transfer skills is contested. Here, we examine the causal impact of WM training embedded in regular school teaching by a randomized educational intervention involving a sampl…

If You Could Read My Mind—An Experimental Beauty-Contest Game with Children

2021

AbstractWe develop a new design for the experimental beauty-contest game (BCG) that is suitable for children in school age and test it with 114 schoolchildren aged 9–11 years as well as with adults. In addition, we collect a measure for cognitive skills to link these abilities with successful performance in the game. Results demonstrate that children can successfully understand and play a BCG. Choices start at a slightly higher level than those of adults but learning over time and depth of reasoning are largely comparable with the results of studies run with adults. Cognitive skills, measured as fluid IQ, are predictive only of whether children choose weakly dominated strategies but are nei…

Intra-individual variability in task performance after cognitive training is associated with long-term outcomes in children

2020

AbstractThe benefits and mechanistic effects of working memory training in children are the subject of much research and debate. The cumulative evidence indicates that training can alter brain structure and function in the short term and have lasting effects on behaviour. We show that five weeks of working memory training led to greater activity in prefrontal and striatal brain regions, better accuracy, and reduced intra-individual variability in response times. The reduction in intra-individual variability can be explained by changes to the evidence accumulation rates and thresholds in a sequential sampling decision model. Critically, intra-individual variability was more closely associate…

Limiting Auditor Liability? - Experimental Evidence on Risk and Ambiguity Attitudes under Real Losses

2009

This paper is motivated by the current debate on limiting auditor liability. In a laboratory experiment, the effect of limited versus unlimited liability on behavior under risk and ambiguity is investigated for risks involving small probabilities. The amount of liability is manipulated in such a way that subjects can pay with their show-up fee under limited liability, but they can suffer out-of-pocket losses under unlimited liability. Findings are that both risk aversion and ambiguity aversion are higher under unlimited liability than under limited liability, and these two constructs are correlated under unlimited liability. These findings provide new empirical evidence for the intuition th…

Do Children Cooperate Conditionally?:Adapting the Strategy Method for First-Graders

2020

We develop a public goods game (PGG) to measure cooperation and conditional cooperation in young children. Our design addresses several obstacles in adapting simultaneous and sequential PGGs to children who are not yet able to read or write, do not possess advanced abilities to calculate payoffs, and only have a very limited attention span. It features the combination of haptic offline explanation, fully standardized audiovisual instructions, computerized choices based on touchscreens, and a suitable incentive scheme. Applying our experimental protocol to 129 German first-graders, we find that already 6-year-olds cooperate conditionally and that the relative frequency of different cooperati…

The Role of Childhood Health for the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Evidence from Administrative Data

2008

We use unique administrative German data to examine the role of childhood health for the intergenerational transmission of human capital. Specifically, we examine the extent to which a comprehensive list of health conditions - diagnosed by government physicians - can account for developmental gaps between the children of college educated parents and those of less educated parents. In total, health conditions explain 18% of the gap in cognitive ability and 65% of that in language ability, based on estimations with sibling fixed effects. Thus, policies aimed at reducing disparities in child achievement should also focus on improving the health of disadvantaged children.

Health Effects on Children’s Willingness to Compete

2011

The formation of human capital is important for a society's welfare and economic success. Recent literature shows that child health can provide an important explanation for disparities in children’s human capital development across different socio-economic groups. While this literature focuses on cognitive skills as determinants of human capital, it neglects non-cognitive skills. We analyze data from economic experiments with preschoolers and their mothers to investigate whether child health can explain developmental gaps in children’s non-cognitive skills. Our measure for children’s noncognitive skills is their willingness to compete with others. Our findings suggest that health problems a…

Combining multiple hypothesis testing with machine learning increases the statistical power of genome-wide association studies

2016

Mieth, Bettina et al.

The relationship between child health, developmental gaps, and parental education: Evidence from administrative data

2012

We use administrative German data to examine the role of physical and mental health conditions in explaining developmental gaps between children whose parents have different educational levels. Specifically, we employ sibling fixed effect models to estimate the effect of a comprehensive list of childhood health conditions – diagnosed by government physicians – on the cognitive and verbal ability of pre-school children. We also apply decomposition methods to examine the extent to which gaps in child development can be attributed to child health conditions. While most physical health conditions have small and insignificant effects, mental health conditions, in particular hyperactivity, have a…

Genome-wide association analyses of risk tolerance and risky behaviors in over 1 million individuals identify hundreds of loci and shared genetic inf…

2018

AbstractHumans vary substantially in their willingness to take risks. In a combined sample of over one million individuals, we conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of general risk tolerance, adventurousness, and risky behaviors in the driving, drinking, smoking, and sexual domains. We identified 611 approximately independent genetic loci associated with at least one of our phenotypes, including 124 with general risk tolerance. We report evidence of substantial shared genetic influences across general risk tolerance and risky behaviors: 72 of the 124 general risk tolerance loci contain a lead SNP for at least one of our other GWAS, and general risk tolerance is moderately to stro…

Limiting Liability? — Risk and Ambiguity Attitudes Under Real Losses

2013

Using a laboratory experiment in which the unlimited liability treatment involves real out-of-pocket losses, we investigate and compare the behavioral effects of auditors’ limited and unlimited liability on behavior under risk and ambiguity. We find that aversion to both risk and ambiguity are higher under unlimited liability than under limited liability, and that these two constructs are correlated under unlimited liability. Our findings explain why some auditors might be hindered in performing their duties properly under unlimited liability. Further, our findings emphasize the importance of appropriately modeling risk and ambiguity attitudes in economic models on liability.