Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization最新文献

{"title":"In or out? Crowding effects in public goods with private gifts: Evidence from crowdfunding","authors":"Anna Bernard ,&nbsp;Marco Gazel","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107023","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107023","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How do cumulative contributions influence subsequent giving to public goods that offer private gifts? While prior research has examined contribution dynamics in fundraising, the role of excludability — the property of preventing noncontributors from accessing the good — remains largely unexplored. We use comprehensive data from a reward-based crowdfunding platform to show that the excludability of a project significantly shapes its contribution pattern. We introduce two novel measures of excludability: one based on a good’s inherent characteristics and another derived from the geographic distribution of backer-project distances. Our analysis reveals that more excludable goods (such as local projects and tangible products) exhibit stronger crowding-in effects, whereas less excludable ones (such as global projects and journalism) experience crowding-out effects. Although crowdfunding platforms systematically highlight cumulative contributions, our findings suggest that fundraisers should emphasize this information, particularly for excludable goods, but not for the least excludable ones.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"235 ","pages":"Article 107023"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143882124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Doing good in the digital world","authors":"Jeffrey Da-Ren Guo","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.106991","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.106991","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Though digital interactions between people have become more commonplace and sophisticated, behavior in digital settings remains underresearched. A distinctive feature of the digital world is the ability to calibrate or withhold one’s identifier: a person can be identified by a string of letters, an avatar, their real name, or even nothing at all. Moreover, that digital identifiers allow a person to mask their physical identity also makes it difficult to attribute digital actions to a physical person, even when the actions are observed. I embed these two features in a laboratory experiment where subjects play a finitely repeated, linear public goods game. Treated subjects are identified in one of three ways—by their photograph, by a random number, or by a self-designed cartoon avatar—and their individual choices are revealed and either attributed to, or decoupled from, their identifier. In line with the previous literature, identifying subjects and increasing the precision of attribution increases contributions relative to a baseline condition without identifiers or revealed individual choices. Remarkably, the treatment effect is robust to less precise identifiers and attribution: contributions increase significantly even when subjects are identified by numbers and their individual contributions are revealed, but decoupled from, those numbers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"235 ","pages":"Article 106991"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143886069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comprehension in economic games","authors":"Lina Koppel ,&nbsp;David Andersson ,&nbsp;Magnus Johannesson ,&nbsp;Eirik Strømland ,&nbsp;Gustav Tinghög","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107039","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107039","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many disciplines rely on economic games to measure prosocial behavior. However, there is a concern that participants may misunderstand these games, complicating interpretation of results. This study combines online and laboratory data (total <em>n</em> = 1568) to assess subject comprehension of five standard economic games: the Dictator Game, Ultimatum Game, Trust Game, Public Goods Game, and Prisoner's Dilemma. The online and lab data collections are carried out separately and for the online data collection we collect data for two separate platforms (Prolific and CloudResearch's MTurk Toolkit). Within each data collection participants carry out all five games, and are randomized to comprehension questions with or without incentives for correct answers. Results indicate that misunderstanding is common: the proportion of participants who misunderstood ranged from 22 % (Dictator Game) to 70 % (Trust Game) in the online samples and from 22 % (Dictator Game) to 53 % (Public Goods Game) in the lab sample. Incentivizing the comprehension questions had no significant impact on misunderstanding, but numeracy was associated with lower misunderstanding. Misunderstanding also predicted increased prosocial behavior in several of the games. Our findings suggest that misunderstanding may be important in explaining prosocial behavior, making it more complicated to draw clear inferences about social preferences from experimental data.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"234 ","pages":"Article 107039"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143881509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Corruption culture of multinationals: Evidence from China","authors":"Haicheng Guo,&nbsp;Sibo Liu,&nbsp;Chaoqun Zhan","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using administrative data and tax returns from multinational corporations, we investigate the impact of foreign cultural norms on corrupt practices within China. By leveraging time-varying ownership details of foreign shareholders, our research reveals that multinationals originating from countries with a prevalent corruption culture tend to exhibit greater corruption in China, as evidenced by increased entertainment costs, with a pronounced effect in industries with more rent-seeking activities. Corrupt foreign firms are more likely to secure subsidies and tax refunds from local governments and realize higher profitability. However, these practices lead to an insignificant change in their innovation outcomes. China’s anti-corruption campaign has significantly reduced the influence of foreign corruption culture, highlighting the importance of robust regulatory enforcement in shaping the behavior of foreign firms operating in emerging economies. Additionally, the influence of foreign culture extends to domestic firms, demonstrating a cultural spillover effect.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"234 ","pages":"Article 107012"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143874467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Land expropriation, child schooling, and child housework: Evidence from China","authors":"Dongqin Wang ,&nbsp;Huaxin Wang-Lu","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107031","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107031","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Land expropriation is common in developing countries to promote local development through resource allocation, yet rapid urbanization often leads local governments to seize farmland unilaterally. The benefits to households and the effects on child outcomes remain unclear. Exploiting the timing of exposure to farmland expropriation, we use a difference-in-differences design to examine its impact on children's schooling rates and weekend housework in rural China. Our findings show that land expropriation increases school attendance by 5.2 percentage points, though it also raises children's weekend housework time. These results are robust to alternative controls, heterogeneous treatment effects, and various confounding tests. This paper illuminates the consequences of regional resource allocation on child development and highlights the need for policymakers to adopt a nuanced approach in supporting children affected by land expropriation and similar policies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"234 ","pages":"Article 107031"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143877086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Career paths in hierarchies: Theory and evidence from Chinese officials","authors":"Jinghong Li ,&nbsp;Zanhui Liu ,&nbsp;Yang Yao","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107027","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107027","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies the dynamic patterns of job durations in a hierarchical government. Using a large dataset of Chinese officials from 1994 to 2017, we find systematic evidence that the promotion rates of officials at different levels of government are negatively correlated, contrary to the common finding of <em>fast track</em> in the literature. To characterize the career paths in hierarchies, we develop a dynamic model of optimal job assignments with symmetric learning. The model highlights the role of seniority in coping with the Type-II error, that is, the risk of over-evaluating an official’s ability. Only very capable officials are spared, and the fast track applies; relatively capable officials are subject to the over-evaluation risk, and their job durations are negatively correlated across levels of government. A negative correlation is also more likely to happen when the controller is more risk averse, which may explain mixed findings in the literature.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"234 ","pages":"Article 107027"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143877085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the optimality of straight deductibles under smooth ambiguity aversion","authors":"Yichun Chi ,&nbsp;Richard Peter ,&nbsp;Wei Wei","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We solve the optimal insurance design problem under identifiable smooth ambiguity aversion with linear transaction cost. We impose monotonicity on indemnity schedules and their associated retention functions. Arrow’s cornerstone result that a straight deductible is optimal may fail to hold. We provide three conditions to restore it: (i) ambiguity does not affect large losses; (ii) priors are ordered according to first-order stochastic dominance and the probability of worse priors is greater conditional on observing a large loss than a small loss; or (iii) priors are ordered in the hazard rate order. We also derive comparative statics and find intuitive results.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"234 ","pages":"Article 107001"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143874466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Institutions and cultural capacity: A systems perspective","authors":"Jenna Bednar ,&nbsp;Scott E Page","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.106990","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.106990","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Societies rely on a mixture of markets, hierarchies, and democratic institutions to allocate resources, make decisions, and establish order. The success of any one institution depends on its design features, the nature of the task, and society’s cultural capacities. They also crucially depend on one another. In this paper, we model institutions and cultural capacities as interdependent. We define cultural-institutional equilibria as configurations in which cultural capacities are consistent with institutional choices, and institutional choices are optimal given tasks and culture. There is a disconnect between producing and leveraging cultural capacity. We consider the implications of this disconnect. In particular, some institutions <em>produce</em> generic cultural capacity, generating positive externalities that improve the performance of other institutions in society, while others are primarily <em>leveragers</em>, taking advantage of the cultural capacity created by other institutions.</div><div>We highlight five results. First, we show that positive feedback between cultural capacities and institutional performance produces multiple equilibria, providing a logic for why cultural capacities and ensemble compositions vary by place. Second, we show that cultural-institutional equilibria are generically not efficient because of a disconnect between producing and leveraging cultural capacity. Third, we show that if one type of institution, say markets, builds cultural capacities that hinder the performance of another institutional type, say democracies, then market expansion can lead to the demise of democracies. Fourth, we derive a <em>paradox of cultural capacity-building</em>: an institutional type that produces high levels of generic cultural capacity—notably, democracy—can all but disappear by making other institutional types relatively more efficient. Finally, we build a more complex model with five types of institutions that includes a positive feedback loop between two types of institutions and show how this increases the proportion of those types. This finding aligns with empirical evidence of the growth in algorithmic institutions and markets and the decline in hierarchical organizations and democracies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"234 ","pages":"Article 106990"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143874468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Composition of peer mothers and gender norms: Class randomization and short-run effects","authors":"Liwen Chen ,&nbsp;Bobby W. Chung ,&nbsp;Guanghua Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Increased exposure to gender-role information affects a girl’s educational performance. Leveraging the classroom randomization in Chinese middle schools, we find that the increased presence of peers’ working mothers significantly enhances a girl’s performance in mathematics. The exposure also reduces gendered attitudes toward mathematics and future careers. Long exposure and a distant parent–daughter relationship enhance peer mothers’ influences. As falsification tests against unobserved confounding factors, we find that exposure to peers’ working mothers does not affect boys’ outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"234 ","pages":"Article 107008"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143855428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Anti-corruption and political trust: Evidence from China","authors":"Ming Fang ,&nbsp;Weizheng Lai ,&nbsp;Congling Xia","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107015","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107015","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How can anti-corruption efforts influence political trust in government? We investigate this question through the lens of China’s recent anti-corruption campaign, launched in 2013, which has disclosed many corruption investigations to the public for the first time. By analyzing a large individual panel dataset, we show that, on average, the campaign has reduced political trust, particularly among groups less informed about corruption before the campaign. We document strong heterogeneity in changes in political trust, possibly driven by prior political attitudes, as captured by previous unpleasant experiences with the government, pro-government indoctrination, and Confucian norms. Our results fit a model in which polarization is rationalized by different priors about the government. We also rule out several alternative explanations for our findings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"234 ","pages":"Article 107015"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143860576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}