Internal Lunch Seminars

The Promised Land: The Effects of the Land Restitution Program in Colombia

We estimate the causal effect of the Colombian land restitution program on access to microcredit for agriculture. We use the timing of the restitution as the source of identification in an event study approach. Using administrative data from the program and all formal credit transactions, we show a significant increase in access to agricultural microcredit. The effects are stronger two years after the restitution when individuals acquire full property rights. Impacts are mainly driven by loans through the Agrarian Bank and supported by guarantees from the Agricultural Guarantee Fund, which are institutions specifically designed to promote investment in agriculture.

MS Teams: https://muni.cz/go/62650c

Decisions under Risk: Dispersion and Skewness

When people take decisions under risk, it is not only the expected utility that is important, but also the shape of the distribution of utility: clearly the dispersion is important, but also the skewness. For given mean and dispersion, decision-makers treat positively and negatively skewed prospects differently. This paper presents a new behaviourally-inspired model for decision making under risk, incorporating both dispersion and skewness. We run a horse-race of this new model against six other models of decision-making under risk and show that it outperforms many in terms of goodness of fit and shows a reasonable performance in predictive ability. It can incorporate the prominent anomalies of standard theory such as the Allais paradox, the valuation gap, and preference reversals, and also the behavioural patterns observed in experiments that cannot be explained by Rank Dependent Utility Theory.

MS Teams: https://muni.cz/go/290799

20 years of emotions and risky choices in the lab: A meta-analysis

This paper is a meta-analysis of experimental studies dealing with the impact of incidental emotions on risky choices, so as to explain traditional heterogeneity of outcomes in the literature. After devising a standard search strategy and filtering out studies that do not comply with a list of eligibility criteria, we include 24 articles from which 109 observations are drawn at the treatment level. At this point, we code a set of moderator variables representing experimental protocols and adopt Hedges’s g as comparable metric. Subgroup analysis and meta-regressions find causal impact of both sadness and fear on risk aversion, albeit to a small extent, as well as highly contrasting patterns depending on the nature of incentives offered in the experiments. The use of monetary incentives turns out to reduce data variability and affects information processing by making subjects more susceptible to emotions. When studies provide real stakes, our results also show that emotions lead to take more risks in individualist countries than in collectivist societies. We discuss possible interpretations of our findings.

MS Teams: https://muni.cz/go/15793f

Offshoring and Well-Being of Workers

Using long panels of industry-specific offshoring information and subjectively reported well-being datasets from Germany, the UK, and Australia from 2000 to 2013, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between offshoring and workers’ well-being in the source country. We employ panel data fixed-effects models with time-variant personality measures and industry-specific measures to alleviate the bias stemming from the non-random sorting of individuals in industries. Our findings suggest that offshoring negatively affects workers’ well-being. The result is unexceptionally consistent across the countries with different labor markets, and the effect is larger in business services and among high-skilled workers. We extensively discuss how contextual “fear-factors” prevailing in the source countries interact with the angst generated by the negative framing of offshoring. To single out such angst, we first show that objective and subjective job security concerns, job characteristics, and labor market conditions only marginally relate to the well-being effect of offshoring. Then, we investigate how the effect of offshoring on well-being is amplified by a larger set of contextual factors pertaining to temporary economic shocks, negative narrative about offshoring during electoral cycles, partisan political preferences, and high immigration rates. Finally, we show that a recent skill upgrade significantly diminishes the negative effect of offshoring on well-being.

MS Teams: https://muni.cz/go/4db99d

Comparing the Behavior of Teams and Individuals in a Public Goods Game with Ostracism - A Null Result?

We provide evidence from a public goods game with ostracism, i.e. the possibility to vote and consequently ostracize others from the game. We focus on how the decisions of individuals and teams differ in this setup. Participants either form groups of individuals or they form groups of two-member-teams to play the public goods game. Concerning contributions, we find a null-result. Concerning earnings, however, we find differences. The ostracism mechanism does not increase average earnings for individuals, but for teams. This is the consequence of a different use of the ostracism mechanism. Teams play a trigger strategy. The mere threat of being punished triggers cooperative behavior, i.e. higher contributions. The punishment as such, however, is seldom really executed. Individuals exclude more and earlier, yielding less earnings since ostracized members’ contributions are missing.

MS Teams: https://muni.cz/go/002610

Gender discrimination and the backlash effect in recruitment and dismissal processes: Experimental evidence from Slovakia

Using a vignette experiment, the present study investigated implicit gender biases against female applicants and whether these biases affect females’ chances of being employed/dismissed and the pay they are offered. A total of 155 HR specialists participated in the study. In Task 1, they were randomly assigned to conditions and evaluated three candidates (all three either men or women) for the post of regional sales manager based on the applicant’s competences, hireability, likeability, and proposed salary. In Task 2, participants were showed a set of vignettes presenting six employees selected for potential dismissal. The paper contributes to the literature by pointing to differential treatment of men and women in the labour market context. While women are likely to be directly discriminated against by significantly lower pay offers, men may suffer from a strong backlash when they have lower educational attainment and display feminine working patterns.

MS Teams: https://muni.cz/go/f56933

Gender Identity, Race, and Ethnicity Discrimination in Access to Mental Health Care: Preliminary Evidence from a Multi-Wave Audit Field Experiment

The Fragmentation of Views in a Democracy

For the love of God? Proselytization, Religious Restrictions and Social Conflicts in India

Gender-based wage discrimination and the backlash effect in recruitment and dismissal processes: Experimental evidence from Slovakia

Abstract: A sample of 155 HR managers participated in an experimental vignette study. In Task 1, they evaluated three CV resumes in terms of the candidates’ competence, hireability, likeability and wage proposal of three candidates applying for a regional manager post. Half of the sample received CVs presented as females’ and half as males’, otherwise the CVs were identical. Generally, male and female candidates were evaluated similarly in terms of competence and hireability. Average and worst male candidates were evaluated as less likeable than identical females. However, wages offered to female candidates were significantly lower than those offered to male candidates. We were unable to identify moderators of the phenomenon other than female HR managers driving the effect. In Task 2, participants were showed a set of vignettes presenting six employees (3 men and 3 women) preselected to be dismissed due to the economic crisis. Apart from basic demographics, the employees were described in terms of age, years in the company and frequency of absences. Again, we switched employees’ gender for half of the sample. We have found that HR managers are more likely to dismiss male employees and that they are particularly unforgiving to male workers with frequent absences.

MS Teams link: http://tiny.cc/mues2020