Abstract: We conducted an audit study with 262 community pharmacies from seven municipalities in the Northeast of Colombia. In the study, a simulated client called and described a list of symptoms experienced by her brother and asked the pharmacist for a recommendation. In our “common” condition, the symptoms were headache, sore throat, and fever. In our COVID condition, we added anosmia (i.e., the loss of smell) as a fourth symptom, allowing better discrimination with respect to other diseases. We find that mentioning anosmia induced a more cautious behavior among pharmacists. The probability that pharmacists recommend registering the case in the dedicated emergency line increased from 19.7 to 32.2 percent, whereas the probability that pharmacists make a prescription decreased from 69.7 to 51.5 percent. The seven selected municipalities were drawn from dengue-endemic and non-endemic areas. Although we hypothesized that experience with symptoms from the common condition would make it harder to provide adequate recommendations in endemic areas, we did not find differences in behavior supporting this hypothesis.

Abstract: We propose a lab-in-the-field experiment to evaluate a low-cost scalable information intervention on high school students' occupational and educational pathways. We employ a career test to study how career suggestions impact students' occupational aspirations and expectations for a national high school exit exam. All students were required to answer career test questions related to three components of career counseling: self-awareness, education, and the labor market. Only the treatment group received career suggestions. Using an incentivized table of bets, participants reported their expected scores on the exam. Receiving career suggestions affects students' occupational aspirations, but 70 % did not alter their aspirations after the treatment. Furthermore, receiving career suggestions negatively affected students' self-assessment of their skills for pursuing a technical program and did not affect their expectations for the exam. Additionally, there was no discernible difference in the exam performance of students who received suggestions compared to those who did not.

Presentation: ESA World Meeting Bogotá 2024 

Abstract: We propose an experiment where participants receive one of two contracts involving a piece-rate payment for performing a real-effort task. The differences in piece-rate levels aim to capture earnings differentials between formal and informal markets to study how the reallocation rules of these contracts, capturing labor mobility, affect the workers’ effort supply. We use a tournament structure where the worst-performer of the best contract and the top-performer of the worst contract enter into a contest, whose outcome is defined by the completed transcriptions in a real-effort task. We find that these contests, regardless of a low or high mobility rule based on effort, increase the participants' productivity.  We also find that low mobility rules have a larger effect on a sample of workers when combined with a meritocratic initial allocation of the contracts. By contrast, students react more to rules evoking high labor mobility. We also find that the most significant increase in productivity comes from participants who retain the best contract after the contest, suggesting that perceptions of downward mobility are dominant in altering effort supply.. 

Presentation: Economics of Informality Conference 2022;  2022 WIDER Development Conference ; Workshop UR Equidad 2021; 

Abstract: We design and report the results of a 940-participant vignette study that measures the prices of intergenerational caregiving from a third-party perspective. We use three vignettes, defined as hypothetical scenarios, in which a hypothetical (single-child) adult must choose between a direct allocation of caregiving time to his or her parents or a transfer covering that caregiving service. We call our variable of interest the vignette-elicited price of caregiving, or VePC. We vary the type and recipient of the transfer across vignettes to examine willingness to pay for care with different providers. We find an average VePC of a direct transfer to parents equivalent to 2.5 daily minimum wages, and that the premium for paying a member of the extended family for a day of caregiving is 11%, whereas the premium for paying a caregiving professional is 18%. We also find a prevalence of extreme valuations in the VePC: 15% and 30% for the lowest and highest valuations, respectively. The exploration of response times suggests that participants having lower valuations were reluctant to give a price. Respondents who have children, in particular those identified as altruistic using some incentivized allocation games, also show lower valuations. We also varied the gender of the hypothetical child, but found no differences in the VePC.

Presentation: ESA World Meeting Bogotá 2024 

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Abstract: We use a laboratory experiment with eye-tracking to explore the effects of different levels of cognitive load on the valuation of casual job attributes. Job attributes include individuality in the task, pay regime, competitive compensation, time flexibility, and the contribution to social security. In this project, we want to explore how the availability of cognitive resources affects the rating received by each contract and the screening process. We hypothesize that cognitive load reduces the differential effect of the job description on the worker's rating for the contract and on time spent on a specific area of interest. To study this, we manipulate the cognitive load using two tasks. The contract rating is simultaneously performed with a task in which participants are asked to choose what color is the word written in. Cognitive load can be (i) low, people see words that are written in colors that are the same as what the words mean; (ii) medium, words are written in colors that are different from what the words mean – stroop task; (iii) high, financial concerns are evoked, and participants also do stroop tasks. This experiment's results could help us understand what aspects of casual jobs improve the contract valuation and receive more attention. 

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