{"title":"Costly argumentation in bargaining","authors":"Emin Karagözoğlu , Kerim Keskin , Deren Çağlayan","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107353","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107353","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study costly argumentation in two canonical bargaining games, where the proposer needs to justify her offer by providing arguments, because the responder derives disutility from accepting an offer that lacks sufficient justification. Argument provision is costly. Since justifying a less generous offer always requires more arguments, there is a strategic trade-off for the proposer: either invest in argument provision to persuade the responder to accept a lower offer, or refrain from providing arguments in which case the responder expects a more generous offer. Assuming an increasing and convex cost of argumentation, we show that an equilibrium with positive levels of argumentation exists in both models if the cost of argument provision is sufficiently low. Our comparative static analyses further reveal that an increase in one’s aversion to lack of sound arguments can make her worse off in equilibrium, both in terms of agreed pie share and collected utility.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 107353"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145684963","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":"Choice flexibility and decision to compete","authors":"Elif E. Demiral , Brianna Halladay","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107361","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107361","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Persistent gender gaps in economic outcomes and leadership representation remain a major challenge. One contributing factor is the lower propensity of women to enter competitive environments, a behavioral difference shown to impact career advancement and earnings. In this study, we examine whether introducing <em>flexibility</em> in compensation decisions—specifically, the ability to revise one’s choice between piece rate and tournament after task completion—can reduce gender differences in willingness to compete. We experimentally vary both the availability and <em>timing</em> of this flexibility: some participants learn ex-ante that they may revise their choice, while others are surprised ex-post. Our results show that surprise flexibility can impact the gender gap in tournament entry, helping slightly more women to switch into competition after task completion. In contrast, when participants are informed in advance, the gender gap slightly widens, as men respond more assertively to the competitive option. These findings highlight how the structure and timing of choice flexibility can shape competitive behavior.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 107361"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145684971","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":"Gender gaps in academia: The role of children","authors":"Estefanía Galván, Victoria Tenenbaum","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107380","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107380","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite progress in women’s participation in science, significant gender gaps persist in the advancement and consolidation of their academic careers. This paper investigates the effect of parenthood on the academic trajectories of male and female scientists. We combine data from a standardized curriculum system, containing longitudinal information on academic achievements of the full population of researchers in Uruguay, with administrative records of academic positions and childbirth demographics. Using an event study approach around the birth date of the first child, we find that parenthood imposes a significant penalty on scientific productivity of mothers but not on that of fathers. On average mothers productivity declines by 17 %, which is equivalent to publishing three fewer articles than fathers in the ten years following childbirth. This penalty is particularly pronounced for women who had their first child before completing their PhD. Additionally, we provide novel evidence of a child penalty in the number of conference presentations by mothers, primarily driven by a sharp decline in the probability of attending international academic events. As a consequence of these motherhood penalties in academic productivity, we find that fathers are more likely to be promoted to higher academic positions in the years following childbirth. These findings suggest that the unequal impact of parenthood on academic trajectories of male and female researchers is an important source of gender gaps in the scientific field.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 107380"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145790282","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}
John VC Nye, Maksym Bryukhanov, Cheryl Litman, Sergiy Polyachenko
{"title":"Education and market liberal preferences","authors":"John VC Nye, Maksym Bryukhanov, Cheryl Litman, Sergiy Polyachenko","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107387","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107387","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Nowadays very little attention has been paid to the worldwide and cross-generation stabilitsy of the relationship between education and pro-market preferences. More importantly, does economic development condition the effect of education on pro-market views? Using data from international surveys (WVS, LITS, ESS, ISSP), the Russian national longitudinal survey (RLMS-HSE) and the Russian survey of Trajectories in Education and Careers (TREC), we show that there is a robust positive relationship between education and free market views in most developed and developing countries. Notably, in the former Soviet Union, the link between more education and greater support for liberal market values holds for both the post-Soviet educated young and the old, who presumably received their education under the Soviet Union. Thus, education is not only correlated with higher support for liberal market values worldwide but, even in the case of the USSR with its anti-market educational content, a change in required years of schooling saw an increase in pro-market sentiment among those people affected.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 107387"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145790283","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}
Simone Marsiglio , Tatyana Perevalova , Marco Tolotti
{"title":"Epidemics and climate change: Disease containment or climate mitigation?","authors":"Simone Marsiglio , Tatyana Perevalova , Marco Tolotti","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107389","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107389","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We analyze the mutual relation between infectious diseases, climate change and economic capability, focusing on the role of individual decisions and public measures. Climate change favors the spread of novel communicable diseases which determine the size of the healthy workforce; healthy workers are the input in the economic production process which generate polluting emissions; polluting emissions are the main driver of carbon concentration ultimately driving climate change. Individuals’ decisions to comply with social distancing regulations as well as income taxation to finance disease treatment and emissions abatement jointly determine epidemiological and compliance dynamics. We show that according to the specific parametrization a broad variety of possible outcomes may arise, such as the coexistence of multiple stable equilibria, path dependency and metastable transitions. We assess the relative desirability of public policies aiming to speed up recovery or to reduce environmental degradation, showing that in a COVID-like disease parametrization it may be convenient to achieve full carbon neutrality to reduce the climate-induced risk of new epidemic outbreaks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 107389"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145840019","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":"Time preferences, rates of return, and real-world investment decisions","authors":"Scott Fulford , Cortnie Shupe","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107396","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107396","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Time preferences are central to all welfare analyses involving intertemporal tradeoffs. We use a model with endogenous interest rates to study the relationship between underlying time preferences and the interest rates people pay. The model suggests that bad shocks push people to pay higher rates than normal, so a single measurement of a preference for “money earlier or later” (MEL) provides little information on underlying preferences. We use several surveys associated with a panel of respondents’ credit bureau records to compare MEL responses to actual borrowing and saving behavior. While people who are paying higher interest rates do tend to prefer money earlier, the relationship is weak; we strongly reject the hypothesis that survey participants directly respond to MEL questions through comparison to their real-world rates of return on investments. As predicted by the model, negative shocks induce people to borrow more, want money earlier, and pay higher interest rates. Borrowing behavior appears to quickly mean revert, however. We propose an alternative approach to measuring time preferences that uses repeated observations of interest rates in large financial data sets.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 107396"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145840018","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}
Daniela Grieco , Patrick Llerena , Anne-Gaëlle Maltese
{"title":"Creativity and task perception","authors":"Daniela Grieco , Patrick Llerena , Anne-Gaëlle Maltese","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107355","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107355","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores how individuals perceive open versus closed tasks in creative contexts and how this perception influences their choice between tasks. The experiment has a 2 × 2 design, where we give the possibility (or not) to choose between tasks, and vary the incentive scheme (flat payment vs. performance-based incentives). We find that subjects perceive a task as more open the lower the goal clarity and the more they feel free to explore. Additionally, we show that the likelihood of choosing an open task increases with the perceived freedom to explore, while it decreases with goal clarity, particularly when incentives in place. The effects of self-selection on creative performance are then investigated.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 107355"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145684965","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":"Information-signaling in pre-trial bargaining: An experiment","authors":"Alice Guerra , Shay Lavie , Enya Turrini","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107343","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107343","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper provides experimental evidence on the effectiveness of self-penalizing commitments as signaling mechanisms in pre-trial bargaining under asymmetric information, aimed at reducing trial rates. Using an online experiment (N=2,041), we design a novel two-type signaling game with asymmetric information, where one party possesses private information regarding the strength of its case, and proposes a take-it-or-leave-it settlement offer to an uninformed party. In the baseline scenario, the uninformed party must decide whether to accept the offer, or reject it and proceed to a costly trial. In our novel signaling treatments, the informed party can credibly commit ex ante to a costly monetary penalty contingent upon losing at trial. Consistent with theoretical predictions, our results show that self-penalizing commitments reduce trial rates. Informed parties are more likely to commit when they have strong cases; and uninformed parties interpret the commitment as a signal of merits, and are more likely to settle less-generous offers when these are coupled with a commitment. However, we also document departures from theory: effect magnitudes are generally smaller than expected; the commitment device is both under- and over-used across offer ranges; and, when committing is possible, buyers sometimes penalize its omission by rejecting otherwise generous offers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 107343"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145617382","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":"Free the period? Evaluating tampon tax reforms using household scanner data","authors":"Klara Kinnl, Ulrich Wohak","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107356","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107356","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study price and volume effects of value-added tax (VAT) reductions for period products. We exploit varying treatment intensities and timing in several European countries and find that prices decrease by 10–13 %. This corresponds to full pass-through 12 months after the VAT reduction. The average effect on aggregate purchase volumes is statistically zero, and we find no evidence that low-income households are disproportionately affected by the reforms. We find homogeneous pass-through for market- and product-level competition measures and provide suggestive evidence that households’ propensity to purchase branded products increases in the months after the tax reform.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 107356"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145840022","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":"Do rural roads promote inclusive entrepreneurship?","authors":"Ananyo Brahma , Vidhya Soundararajan","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107381","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107381","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates whether rural road infrastructure can foster inclusive entrepreneurship. Using enterprise data from India, we examine how a national rural road construction program, which connected previously isolated villages, affects entrepreneurship across different social groups. Our findings reveal that new feeder roads increase the number of service enterprises for all caste categories, including marginalized groups. However, manufacturing entrepreneurship increases only among the non-marginalized caste groups. For marginalized groups, the increase in entrepreneurship appears to be a response to a relative decline in wage employment opportunities following road construction. Formal finance and education infrastructure serve as key channels through which road connectivity fosters entrepreneurship.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"241 ","pages":"Article 107381"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145883941","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}