publications

I have previously sought to answer questions relating to social preferences, discrimination, and disparate treatment in both market and non-market settings. I have used both laboratory and field experiments. In more recent work I consider how individual characteristics correlate with decision making, examining gender as well as the role of intelligence. 

Drouvelis, M., & Pearce, G., European Economic Review, (2023), vol 206, February, 104372

This project was funded by the University of Birmingham Business School.

We examine the impact of intelligence on decision making in an infinitely repeated sequential public goods game. Using a two-part experiment, we collect data on subjects’ intelligence and a wide range of preference characteristics, and match these to their full contingent strategy profiles. Using techniques from machine learning to categorise subjects' strategies into types, we find that first movers (leaders) are less likely to play a free--riding strategy as their level of intelligence increases, with a similar finding for second movers (followers) playing grim--trigger strategies. Performing simulations using players' strategies to produce over 9000 unique interactions, we find that groups contribute more and are more profitable as intelligence increases. Our results have implications for the design of policies that can promote group success.



Drouvelis, M., & Pearce, G., Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, (2023), vol 206,182-203

This project was funded by the University of Birmingham Business School and the University of Exeter Business School. 

In this paper we study the link between intelligence and lying. This is done under two distinct experimental paradigms: the die rolling paradigm, and the mind game paradigm. We compare the behaviour of subjects conditional on their intelligence in each of these paradigms when lying benefits the subject who lies (Selfish treatment) or a charitable cause (Charity treatment). We report some evidence that lying increases when it benefits a charitable cause, and limited evidence that more intelligent individuals increase lying when doing so benefits a charity. Our results are consistent with models of self--image concerns, and could have important implications for the existing lying literature.





Bindra, P.C., & Pearce, G., Economic Inquiry, (2022), 60(4), 1854– 1874

The experiments in this paper were conducted as part of the research program at the SFB F63 at the University of Innsbruck whilst I was a postdoctoral  researcher.

This project was funded by the University of Innsbruck SFB F63.

We present a natural field experiment to examine if priming can influence behaviour in a market for credence goods. 40 testers took 600 taxi journeys in Vienna, Austria, and using a between--subject design we vary the script they spoke, each designed to prime either honesty, dishonesty, or a competitor. We find that the honesty prime increases taxi fares by 5.5% relative to a baseline, the result of overcharging rather than overtreatment. Priming dishonesty and a competitor have no impact on fares. We find that the effects of priming on behaviour are likely to be small compared to information asymmetries.



Everett, J.A.C., Colombatto, C., & many others, Nature Human Behaviour, (2021) 5, 1074–1088

My contribution to this project was funded by the University of Exeter Business School.

Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas. Past research suggests that utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: sacrificing some people to save many others (‘instrumental harm’) reduces trust, while maximizing the welfare of everyone equally (‘impartial beneficence’) may increase trust. In a multi-site experiment spanning 22 countries on six continents, participants (N = 23,929) completed self-report (N = 17,591) and behavioural (N = 12,638) measures of trust in leaders who endorsed utilitarian or non-utilitarian principles in dilemmas concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Across both the self-report and behavioural measures, endorsement of instrumental harm decreased trust, while endorsement of impartial beneficence increased trust. These results show how support for different ethical principles can impact trust in leaders, and inform effective public communication during times of global crisis. 

Grosskopf, B. & Pearce, G., Management Science, (2020) vol 66, 11, pp. 4921-5484,iii-iv

This paper formed part of my PhD thesis and was funded by the University of Exeter Business School.

We present a natural field experiment designed to measure other-regarding preferences in the market for taxis. We employed testers of varying ethnicity to take a number of predetermined taxi journeys. In each case, we endowed them with only 80% of the expected fare. Testers revealed the amount they could afford to pay to the driver midjourney and asked for a portion of the journey for free. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, we vary the length of the journey and whether a business card is elicited. We find that (1) the majority of drivers give at least part of the journey for free, (2) giving is proportional to the length of the journey, and (3) 27% of drivers complete the journey. Evidence of outgroup negativity against black testers is also reported. In order to link our empirical analysis to behavioral theory, we estimate the parameters of a number of utility functions. The data and the structural analysis lend support to the quantitative predictions of experiments that measure other-regarding preferences, and they shed further light on how discrimination can manifest itself within our preferences. 




Cobo–Reyes, R., Dominguez, J.J., García–Quero, F., Grosskopf, B., Lacomba, J.A., Lagos, F., Liu, T.X., & Pearce, G., Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, (2020) vol 179, pp. 653-666

This paper examines how social preferences develop with age. This is done using a range of mini-dictator games from which we classify 665 subjects into a variety of behavioural types. We expand on previous developmental studies of pro-sociality and parochialism by analysing individuals aged 9–67, and by employing a cross country study where participants from Spain interact with participants from different ethnic groups (Arab, East Asian, Black and White) belonging to different countries (Morocco, China, Senegal and Spain). We identify a ‘U-shaped’ relationship between age and egalitarianism that had previously gone unnoticed, and appeared linear. An inverse “U-shaped” relationship is found to be true for altruism. A gender differential is found to emerge in teenage years, with females becoming less altruistic but more egalitarian than males. In contrast to the majority of previous economic studies of the development of social preferences, we report evidence of increased altruism, and decreased egalitarianism and spite expressed towards black individuals from Senegal. 




Grosskopf, B. & Pearce, G., Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, (2017) vol 141, pp. 29-42 

This paper formed part of my PhD thesis and was funded by the University of Birmingham Business School.

We present a field experiment designed to examine the discriminatory motives of an understudied demographic: the poorest people in England. Subjects are first asked to divide £10 between two strangers, and then play a £10 dictator game with another stranger. We subtly vary the ethnicity of the receivers by providing subjects with surnames randomly drawn from the electoral register, including treatments that allow us to parse behaviour into either in-group favouritism or out-group negativity, an important behavioural distinction that is typically overlooked in the discrimination literature. Our results suggest that the observed discriminatory attitudes are the result of out-group negativity rather than in-group favouritism. We advance the literature on discrimination through the estimation of a structural model of group-contingent social preferences, which we exploit to perform counterfactual simulations. Our results provide insights into the behaviour of this unique demographic and provide a rationale for why they may support discriminatory policies in their voting behaviour. 

other publications

  Fišar, M., Greiner, B., Huber, C., Katok, E., Ozkes, A., and the Management Science Reproducibility Collaboration, Management Science (forthcoming)

I contributed to this crowd sourced research project as one of the hundreds of reviewers that make up the Management Science Reproducibility Collaboration.

With the help of more than 700 reviewers we assess the reproducibility of nearly 500 articles published in the journal Management Science before and after the introduction of a new Data and Code Disclosure policy in 2019. When considering only articles for which data accessibility and hard- and software requirements were not an obstacle for reviewers, the results of more than 95%of articles under the new disclosure policy could be fully or largely computationally reproduced. However, for 29% of articles at least part of the dataset was not accessible to the reviewer. Considering all articles in our sample reduces the share of reproduced articles to 68%. These figures represent a significant increase compared to the period before the introduction of the disclosure policy, where only 12% of articles voluntarily provided replication materials, out of which 55% could be (largely) reproduced. Substantial heterogeneity in reproducibility rates across different fields is mainly driven by differences in dataset accessibility. Other reasons for unsuccessful reproduction attempts include missing code, unresolvable code errors, weak or missing documentation, but also soft- and hardware requirements and code complexity.  Our findings highlight the importance of journal code and data disclosure policies, and suggest potential avenues for enhancing their effectiveness.