Past presentations
You will find here a presentation of the previous presentations! Different topics but one common element: the use of experimental methods
Title: The limits to universalism
Abstract:
Surveys, ballot measures, donations, and consumer spending alike reveal a growing concern for the welfare of animals. What is driving this phenomenon? Does it follow a general shift toward more universalist attitudes, or are social preferences for humans and animals substitutes? I propose a representative survey experiment to measure the distribution, interdependence, and determinants of universalist attitudes toward various human or animal out-groups. Attitudes would be elicited in two ways: (1) via reviously validated hypothetical money allocation tasks between an in-group member and an out-group representative; (2) by allowing respondents to make donations to NGOs that focus on a specific out-group. In a between design, subjects would be randomly exposed to two treatments designed to vary the perceived distance to animal out-groups and dynamic norm beliefs about the treatment of animals.
Title: Recommender Systems Unplugged: Effects of explaining algorithmic recommendations on music discovery, an experimental approach
(co-writing with Julien M'Barki)
Abstract:
Music streaming services make massive use of algorithms in their music recommender systems (MRS) to guide users to tracks they are likely to enjoy. However, the black-box nature of these algorithms makes them difficult for users to understand, both in terms of how they work and the music they predict. The field of explainable AI (XAI), and in particular its “explanation” side, has emerged to make the uses of AI (including MRSs) more comprehensible to users. This paper aims to observe, using an experimental method, whether the explanation of an MRS algorithm induces a change in discovery behavior on music streaming services. In a theoretical framework, we model two types of users' discovery behaviors, namely “study” and “browse” behaviors. We then test in the lab the explanation effects on these behaviors by explaining two simplified MRSs, taking into account only certain music recommendation criteria.
Title: A discrete choice experiment exploring forest owners' preferences for insurance against natural and weather events
Abstract:
Natural hazards threaten forest ecosystems, and this threat is increasing as a result of climate change. Among the relevant means of covering natural risks, insurance is presented as a risk-sharing strategy. Indeed, insurance is seen as a means of financing resilience and adaptation to climate change by numerous international bodies and reports (OECD, 2015; Global Agenda Council on Climate Change, 2014; Article 4.8 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Article 3.14 of the Kyoto Protocol). However, adoption of forest insurance by private landowners remains low or non-existent in most European countries due to factors such as cost, lack of knowledge and poor risk perception. In this study, we use a discrete choice experiment to reveal the insurance contract preferences of private forest owners. The results of this study could help to develop forest insurance policies that are better adapted to the needs and preferences of private forest owners, and promote more sustainable and resilient forest management practices in the face of climate change.
Title: Beliefs in repeated dictator games: an experimental approach
Abstract:
This project proposes a laboratory experiment to explore the nexus between beliefs, actions, and reputation within finite and indefinitely repeated dictator games. Our primary aim is to shed light on subjects' elicited beliefs about their matched player's actions. Beyond actions, we want to extend our analysis to study the evolution of beliefs on a simple reputation, an information device that summarises previous actions of the game.
Arthur Heim (PSE)
Title: Beyond employment: Exploring the unintended consequences of a welfare-to-work programme for single parents in France
Abstract:
Welfare reforms around the world over the past 30 years have been largely centered around the ”making work pay” narrative, but the evidence of the efficacy of these politics are at best mixed. A strand of recent work shows that monetary incentives to participate in the labour market may simply not be salient or tailored enough to be effective. In this paper, we analyse the French tax-benefit system and show that its schedule and rules creates large variations in implicit tax rate that penalise single mothers on welfare. More precisely, we show that the implicit marginal tax rate is highest specifically on full-time minimum wage incomes, creating a dynamic that we call “assistaxation” : those supposed to be incentivised by public assistance end up unknowingly and disproportionately penalised by the tax-benefit system. Conversely, there is a hole in the marginal tax rate at the half-time minimum wage level, that does not create bunching in the general population. Relying on a randomised experiment of an intensive welfare-to-work programme in France targetting single mothers on long term welfare, we demonstrate that participants’ learning of monetary incentives influenced their choice of working less, and not more. Using instrumental distributional regressions and quantile regressions, we investigate the effect of the programme at the intensive margin recovering the distribution of potential outcomes of treated and untreated compliers. Importantly, monetary incentives are very different by number of children. we show that the distribution of labour incomes for treated compliers bunches at part-time minimum wage levels. The reaction is strongest for the most disincentivised group at the full-time minimum wage level. we also show that treated compliers had other important reactions including re-partnering and de-cohabitation, strongly hinting at how much the tax-benefit system can influence family configuration. Ultimately, all these significant reactions combined yield a precise null effect on the entire distribution of net disposable income per capita : while they marginally optimised their work-life balance, participants are no less poor. These results are robust to various estimation methods including non-parametric data driven instrumental distribution regressions.
Title: Level 0 specification in 3x3 games
Abstract:
The Level-k model is one of the most important bounded rationality models. In this model, a level 0 player has a non-strategic behavior, a level 1 player best responds to the level 0 player, a level 2 best responds to the level 1 player, etc. One regular critic of this model is the level 0 specification, which is often chosen arbitrarily. In this experiment proposal, I present multiple 3x3 games to understand what is the most realistic level 0 specification. The most commonly used level 0 specification is the uniform one (i.e. the level 0 plays randomly) and it can be compared to a maxmax level 0 (i.e. the behavior with the highest potential) to a maxmin level 0 and a jointmax level 0 (i.e. the strategy maximizing the payoff for all players).
(SKEMA Business School, Campus Sophia Antipolis /GREDEG, Université Côte d’Azur)
Title: An Experiment on how to avoid Adverse Specialization in a Multitask Environment
Abstract:
Many firms simultaneously pursue short-term profitability and long-term objectives such as sustainability. Yet, their employees keep focusing on business-as-usual, neglecting the second objective for a lack of clear appraisal and rewards. This phenomenon is called adverse specialization, as the employee concentrate on business-as-usual related tasks while the firm would have them address the full set of tasks. One solution advanced in the theoretical literature is to implement contingent monitoring and clawbacks in order to align the employee's behavior with the principal's objectives. Using an experimental methodology, this study tests and finds evidence for implementing this scheme.
Title: The effects of reminders on engagement and walking: Evidence from a large scale experiment
(co-writing Beatrice Braut and Sarah Zaccagni)
Abstract:
Do reminders on mobile phones promote walking? We investigate this question using a large-scale field experiment on more than 20,187 individuals in France. In collaboration with a step-tracking application, we test how different types of reminders and different extensions of the intervention affect walking habits. We send three types of messages framed to emphasize different behavioral features: sunk cost, peers, and self-comparison. We also vary the duration of the intervention (1 versus 3 weeks) per each of them. First, we document that women walk less than men, but are more committed to using the application. The average number of steps over the intervention period follows a downward trend, likely determined by a seasonal effect. We find heterogeneous treatment effects based on the type of walker: users who walk less than 5,000 steps before the treatment are the ones who benefit more from the messages.
Title: Effect of misinformation on rational voting in the laboratory
(co-writing with Lily Savey)
Abstract:
Misinformation is often shared to improve the electoral chances of extreme candidates. Although it has been shown to influence voting in this way in France and Germany, the literature does not explicitly show that this is a deviation from rational voting. Rational voting means opting for one’s preferred candidate or, when she does not stand a viable chance of winning the election, voting for a similar candidate who does. As such, voters can maximise the utility of their vote. Our aim is to explore the extent to which misinformation obstructs rational voting. We propose to study rational voting in the laboratory, as it allows us to control for important factors that are inevitably imprecisely measured using survey data.
Thiago Scarelli (PSE)
Title: "Worker’s Preferences over Payment Schedules: Evidence from Ridesharing Drivers"
Abstract:
An occupation is usually characterized as a combination of what people do and how much they are paid for it, with little attention to the fact that work arrangements also define when people are paid for their labor. This paper complements this discussion by investigating how much value people assign to having a short delay between their tasks and the associated compensation. Using a national experimental survey with ridesharing drivers in Brazil, I find a very strong preference for the quick payment feature, as a third of the drivers report preferring an arrangement that pays always on the same day of the ride against the alternative of earning about twice as much with a month's delay. Evidence from subgroup analysis and free text responses suggests that the short delay is preferable in this context due to (a) the presence of financial constraints combined with (b) the value of being able to quickly adjust income by working more hours when needed. An experimentally induced discussion about the driver's potential liquidity sources makes them marginally more likely to prefer high-rate, long-delay contracts, indicating a modest role for primed perceptions with respect to preferences over work payment schedules.
Title: "(Un)Willingness to wait for/learn about the diagnosis, using Discrete Choice Experiments"
Abstract:
The complexity and rarity of rare diseases often lead to unique care pathways characterised by an extended time to diagnosis, which can be caused by various factors from both healthcare providers and patients. In this paper, the focus is on the patient-side effects of diagnostic delays, specifically driven by individual and collective preferences for health information. Additionally, the paper sheds light on future policy interventions aimed at reducing the time to diagnosis. The goal of this paper is to examine how patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals value diagnostic information and explore ways in which healthcare providers can enhance communication with patients and caregivers, thereby promoting patient adherence and improving overall health outcomes.
Title: "Attentional capture by visual marketing cues: computational modeling and experimental evidence"
Abstract:
Visual marketing cues are ubiquitous in online shopping environments, yet the underlying attentional mechanisms are still imperfectly understood. Introducing the effect of cues in standard computational models of multi-alternative multi-attribute decision-making, I generate predictions on choices and response times depending on whether the cues are product-specific, attribute-specific or both and how salient they are. I then test these predictions in an online product choice experiment with induced preferences
Title: "Does others’ health count for peanuts? Health, market returns, and pro-sociality"
Abstract:
Food safety issues are pervasive in low-income countries. Products that are available to local consumers often do not meet health-related standards that are applicable in higher-income countries. In the context of poor regulation, it is necessary to explore potential reasons why farmers might invest in quality production. This paper aims to highlight the channels that might drive farmers to value information about food quality. Through a lab-in-the-field experiment using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism, we elicit the willingness to pay (WTP) for access to groundnut powder with a low level of aflatoxin among Senegalese groundnut farmers. Randomized access to thorough information about aflatoxin is introduced to estimate the effect of information. In our design, the groundnut powder is allocated between three purposes: own consumption, consumption by others, and sale. Preliminary results show that respondents are willing to pay more for their own health but altruistic farmers value equally their health and others'. Information increases respondents' willingness to pay for all purposes.
Title: "Inflation and behavior: Experimental intervention and analysis"
Abstract:
We experimentally analyze the impact of inflation on individuals’ savings and consumption behavior. Through an online experiment, we distinguish the underlying situational and personal factors that correlate with people’s adaptability to changes in inflationary conditions, observe people’s savings and consumption decision-making processes, and determine whether an intervention can improve their decisions and adaptability in such changing conditions. Subjects complete a principal task, an online intertemporal savings/consumption game that mimics actual saving and consumption decisions in a controlled environment. We measure subjects' deviations from the benchmark optimal strategy to derive their abilities to recognize and adapt their savings and consumption decisions to the changing inflationary conditions. To explore the individual determinants of these recognition and adaptation abilities, we collect a series of additional measures—some during the savings game (“internal measures”) and others through a battery of tests and questionnaires (“external measures”). Further, half of subjects receive an intervention, which consists of a simple financial education lesson to help them improve their strategy. By comparing the degree of the intervention’s impact on subjects’ performance to their internal and external measures, we aim to identify the characteristics and groups most and least equipped to benefit from such financial-education guidance for dealing with inflation. Taken together, these results and correlations offer the foundation for more precise behavioral modeling and can facilitate the development of more targeted and behaviorally effective guidance for specific populations—to help them protect themselves from inflation.
Title: "Information disclosure and mortgage insurance choice under substandard risk"