Research

My research field is Applied Micro with the focus on Behavioral Economics (with applications to Labor and Personnel Economics) and Experimental Economics.

I have been studying multiple (conflicting) norms and institution formation in social dilemmas. I am also interested in the origins of trust and fairness inclinations.

My current work focuses on the behavioral effects of wage arrears in a Russian firm in Early Transition.

Working papers

Shifting Responsibility: Leadership in an Asymmetric Public Goods Game

[pdf]

The effect of leadership on the provision of public goods has been widely studied in symmetric groups, in which equal contributions lead to equal payoffs. However, little is known how it performs in asymmetric groups. I consider two aspects of leadership in such groups: group asymmetries and endogeneity. I use a laboratory experiment to study individual contribution decisions in a sequential public goods game with heterogeneous returns. First, I investigate how followers' contributions differ between groups with fixed composition of returns, in which leaders' returns differ. Second, I investigate, whether followers' contributions differ between leadership institutions with fixed and with endogenous composition of returns, in which leaders' returns are determined by their followers. My findings suggest that endogenizing this institution may backfire. I find that followers try to motivate the leader to contribute by giving him high returns, while at the same time they lower their own contributions. This stands in contrast with findings from the treatments with predetermined leaders' returns - there, the followers are more likely to follow their leaders, especially when the leader has lower return from the public good.

The Bonding Effect of Deferred Compensation - Worker Separations from a Large Firm in Early Transition Russia

(joint work with Thomas Dohmen and Hartmut Lehmann)

[preliminary version available upon request]

Deferred payments, as implicit contracts, are predicted to bind workers to firms as long as workers believe that firms adhere to these implicit contracts. We employ a unique personnel data set from a Russian manufacturing firm to investigate whether wage arrears, delayed payments of wages, induce bonding effects. We find that workers' separation rates decrease dramatically when workers experience wage arrears, providing evidence for the bonding effects of deferred compensation schemes. After workers are repaid nominal wages, but have suffered real wage losses due to unexpectedly high inflation, we observe that workers affected by wage arrears again become much more likely to separate during and after the repayment period of a second episode of wage arrears, providing evidence for the weakening of the bonding effect after the firm's reputation for adequately compensating for deferred payments has been jeopardized.

Work in progress

Selection into Roles in a Trust Game

Trust and Discrimination: the Effect of the Arrival of Information

Selection of equilibria based on the timing of information arrival in repeated plays of Trust game.

Other non-refereed publications and policy reports

G.Besstremyannaya, O.Bondarenko, M.Ananyev, M.Kartseva (2013) Formation of the Institutional Base and Providing Creation of the System of Good Laboratory Practice in accordance with OECD Requirements, CEFIR Policy Papers, Policy Paper #38 (link).

M.Ananyev and N.Mitin (2013) Linear vs. Nonlinear GARCH Models for RTS Index Returns, Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics Working Papers Series. Moscow – WP No 19 (in Russian, link).

(co-author of) Eurasian Development Bank (2012) Unified trade policy and addressing the modernization challenges of the SES, Kazakhstan – Report #8 (in Russian, link).

D.Serebryakov, I.Kuznetsov, O.Uryadov and M.Ananyev (2009) Prediction of Rapid Increase in the Number of Homicides, Problems of Mathematical History: Foundations, Informational Resources, Data Analysis. Moscow – pp. 196-201 (book chapter in Russian).