Publications

We conducted a field experiment to identify the causal effect of extrinsic reward cues on the sorting and performance of nascent social entrepreneurs. The experiment, carried out with one of the United Kingdom’s largest support agencies for social entrepreneurs, encouraged 431 nascent social entrepreneurs to submit a full application for a grant competition that provides cash and in-kind mentoring through a one-time mailing sent by the agency. The applicants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: one group received a standard mailing that emphasized the intrinsic incentives of the program, or the opportunity to do good (Social treatment), and the other two groups received a mailing that instead emphasized the extrinsic incentives – either the financial reward (Cash treatment) or the in-kind reward (Support treatment). Our results show that an emphasis on extrinsic incentives has a causal impact on sorting into the applicant pool: the extrinsic reward cues led fewer candidates to apply and “crowded out” the more prosocial candidates while “crowding in” the more money-oriented ones. The extrinsic reward cues also increased application effort, which led these candidates to be more successful in receiving the grant. Yet, the selection resulting from the extrinsic incentive cues led to worse performance at the end of the one-year grant period. Our results highlight the critical role of intrinsic motives in the selection and performance of social enterprises and suggest that using extrinsic incentives to promote the development of successful social enterprises may backfire in the longer run. 

This paper analyzes a two-person, two-stage model of sequential exploration where both information and payoff externalities exist and tests the derived hypotheses in the laboratory. We theoretically show that, even when agents are self-interested and perfectly rational, the information externality induces an encouragement effect: a positive effect of first player exploration on the optimality of the second player exploring as well. When agents have other-regarding preferences and imperfectly optimize, the encouragement effect is strongest. The explorative nature of the game raises the expected surplus compared with a payoff equivalent public goods game. We empirically confirm our main theoretical predictions using a novel experimental paradigm. Our findings are relevant for motivating and managing groups and teams innovating not only for private but also and especially so, for public goods.

We investigate the effects of organizational culture and personal values on performance under individual and team contest incentives. We develop a model of regard for others and in-group favoritism that predicts interaction effects between organizational values and personal values in contest games. These predictions are tested in a computerized lab experiment with exogenous control of both organizational values and incentives. In line with our theoretical model, we find that prosocial (proself)-orientated subjects exert more (less) effort in team contests in the primed prosocial organizational values condition, relative to the neutrally primed baseline condition. Further, when the prosocial organizational values are combined with individual contest incentives, prosocial subjects no longer outperform their proself counterparts. These findings provide, to our knowledge, a first, affirmative, causal test of person–organization fit theory. They also suggest the importance of a “triple-fit” between personal preferences, organizational values, and incentive mechanisms for prosocially orientated individuals

We exploit a comprehensive new panel dataset on retailbank branch locations in 233 neighborhoods (local markets) in the metropolitan area of Antwerp to describe (i) how between 1991 and 2006 the patterns of bank presence, entry, exit and choice deeply evolve and (ii) whether and how changes in these “on the ground” patterns systematically diverge across Antwerp’s different, highly segregated neighborhoods. We show that over the 15-year period under study entry and exit dynamics substantially intensify, the level change in branch desert grows significantly, and bank choice markedly declines; and that between 1996 and 2001, these changes are robustly associated with the neighborhood average income. In doing so, we advance a new technique for generating spatial measures that both minimize the discretization bias and can be reliably linked to neighborhoods. We demonstrate that the resulting measures are indeed more precise than traditional count measures

Extended warranties are popular but expensive. This paper examines how consumers value these warranties, and asks whether economic considerations alone can account for their popularity. Results from two field surveys show that consumers greatly overestimate both the likelihood and the cost of product breakdown. However, these biases alone do not explain their willingness to buy warranties. In fact, we find evidence of probability neglect, in which warranty purchase decision depends on the magnitude of the possible consequences of not having insurance and not on the probability of having to suffer these consequences. The expected emotional benefits from having a warranty was the best predictor of purchase decision and willingness to pay. We also found that people with higher cognitive skills are less likely to overestimate the economic determinants of warranty value, yet are still highly influenced by emotional considerations when deciding whether to purchase a warranty.

We examine the effects of information and information presentation format on individuals’ choice of payment method in a large randomized experiment carried out with the Belgian National Office for Family Benefits. We find that a one-time mailing providing information about method of payment for child benefit support caused a fourfold increase in parents’ decision to switch from payment by check to electronic payment. Simple, low-cost supplements significantly raised people’s responsiveness to the mailing. Our results suggest that complexity and information (processing) costs pose significant barriers to transitioning to electronic payment methods, and that deliberate efforts to lower these costs can contribute to large behavioral changes.

We model inter-household transfers between nomadic livestock herders as the state-dependent consequence of individuals’ strategic interdependence, resulting from the existence of multiple, opposing externalities-more specifically, a public-good security externality among individuals sharing a social (e.g. ethnic) identity in a potentially hostile environment, and a resource appropriation externality related to the use of common property grazing lands. Our model augments the extant literature on transfers, and is more consistent with the limited available empirical evidence on heterogeneous and changing transfers’ patterns among east African pastoralists. The core principles of our model possibly apply more broadly, for example to long-distance migrants or even ‘foot soldiers’ in street gangs

Two competing nonprofits with ideologically distinct missions compete for donor funding to provide an indivisible public good in a population with heterogeneous preferences. This paper examines the extent to which (average) public values are undermined and nonprofits’ ideology compromised in a contractual game in which the right to provide the public good is the outcome of competition between nonprofits. We also scrutinize the roles of (i) cooperative versus competitive contracting, (ii) multiple public goods, (iii) enforceability of actions and (iv) observability of nonprofit costs in determining the equilibrium terms of the contract. In each case, the intensity of the ideological divide between the donor and the nonprofits jointly impact the degree to which compromises are made in terms of both the public’s and nonprofit’s missions, and the ability on the part of the donor to reap double (cost-saving and strategic) financial gains.