This paper reviews the literature on gender differences in economic experiments. In the three main sections, we identify robust differences in risk preferences, social (other-regarding) preferences, and competitive preferences. We also speculate on the source of these differences, as well as on their implications. Our hope is that this article will serve as a resource for those seeking to understand gender differences and to use as a starting point to illuminate the debate on gender-specific outcomes in the labor and goods markets.

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Gender Differences in Preferences

We develop a theory of prosocial behavior that combines heterogeneity in individual altruism and greed with concerns for social reputation or self-respect. Rewards or punishments (whether material or imagerelated) create doubt about the true motive for which good deeds are performed and this “overjustification effect” can induce a partial or even net crowding out of prosocial behavior by extrinsic incentives. We also identify the settings that are conducive to multiple social norms and more generally those that make individual actions complements or substitutes, which we show depends on whether stigma or honor is (endogenously) the dominant reputational concern. Finally, we analyze the socially optimal level of incentives and how monopolistic or competitive sponsors depart from it. Sponsor competition is shown to potentially reduce social welfare.

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Incentives and Prosocial Behavior

Poverty in the United Kingdom

Enclosed is a copy of the Board of Governors’ Semiannual Agenda of Regulations for the period August 1, 1980 through February 1, 1981. The Semiannual Agenda provides you with information on those regulatory matters that the Board now has under consideration or anticipates considering over the next six months, and is divided into three parts: (1) regulatory matters that the Board had considered during the previous six months on which final action has been taken; (2) regulatory matters that have been proposed for public comment and that require further Board consideration; and (3) regulatory matters that the Board may consider over the next six months.

Federal Reserve Bank of New Yorkの制定せる財務諸表様式について

Four main messages emerge from the study of subjective survey data. First, a large experimental literature by and large supports economists' skepticism of subjective questions. Second, put in an econometric framework, these findings cast serious doubts on attempts to use subjective data as dependent variables, because the measurement error appears to correlate with a large set of characteristics in behaviors. Third, these data may be useful as explanatory variables. Finally, the empirical work suggests that subjective variables are useful in practice for explaining differences in behavior across individuals. Changes in answers to these questions, however, do not appear useful in explaining changes in behavior.

/pdf/do-people-mean-what-they-say-implications-for-subjective-3bd7j8ne4z.pdf

Do People Mean What They Say? Implications for Subjective Survey Data

We use OECD-PIAAC data to estimate the earnings effects of both years of education and of numerical skills. Our identification strategy exploits differential exposure to educational reforms across birth cohorts and countries. We find that education has the strongest earnings effect. A one standard deviation increase in years of education raises earnings by almost 22 percentage points (corresponding to a return to education above 7 percentage points), which compares with a lower percentage points return to an equivalent increase in numerical skills. Our results suggest that the same set of unobservables drives the accumulation of both formal years of education and numeracy skills. OLS estimates underestimate returns to human capital, consistently with the idea that educational reforms favor the human capital acquisition of abler children from disadvantaged parental backgrounds. When we consider numerical skills alone education reforms cannot identify any significant effect of skills on wages, however, when we jointly consider schooling and skills as endogenous factors in a recursive structure we find a significant role for skills in determining wages.

/pdf/skilled-or-educated-educational-reforms-human-capital-and-5c2o8pumsb.pdf

Skilled or Educated? Educational Reforms, Human Capital, and Earnings ☆

Correlations between the earnings of siblings reflect shared family and community background, but evidence is mixed on the relative magnitudes of these influences. Using administrative data on the Danish population we link brothers, schoolmates and teenage neighbors and estimate a model of multiple group earnings dynamics to measure jointly the relative importance of family, neighborhoods and schools for long-term earnings. We find that: (1) family is by far the most relevant factor; (2) the influence of neighborhoods and schools falls rapidly, becoming insignificant by age 30; and (3) community effects are persistent and upward biased by a factor of five if family effects are ignored.

/pdf/family-community-and-long-term-earnings-inequality-12ubzieqfa.pdf

Family, Community and Long-Term Earnings Inequality

mvprobit estimates M-equation probit models, by the method of simulated maximum likelihood (SML). (Cf. probit and biprobit which estimate 1-equation and 2-equation probit models by maximum likelihood.) The variance-covariance matrix of the cross-equation error terms has values of 1 on the leading diagonal, and the off-diagonal elements are correlations to be estimated. mvprobit uses the Geweke-Hajivassiliou-Keane (GHK) simulator to evaluate the M-dimensional Normal integrals in the likelihood function. For each observation, a likelihood contribution is calculated for each replication, and the simulated likelihood contribution is the average of the values derived from all the replications. The simulated likelihood function for the sample as a whole is then maximized using standard methods (ml in this case).

MVPROBIT: Stata module to calculate multivariate probit regression using simulated maximum likelihood

We investigate the effect of employer job security guarantees on employee perceptions of job insecurity. Using linked employer–employee data from the 1998 British Workplace Employee Relations Survey, we find job security guarantees reduce employee perceptions of job insecurity. This finding is robust to endogenous selection of job security guarantees by employers engaging in organizational change and workforce reductions. Furthermore, there is no evidence that increased job security through job guarantees results in greater work intensification, stress, or lower job satisfaction.

Workers' Perceptions of Job Insecurity: Do Job Security Guarantees Work?

This paper examines employment transitions among men and women in the UK aged between 50 and the state pension age. We begin by examining the issue of duration dependence, using standard duration models. We then use a fourth order Markov model to estimate quarterly transitions while allowing for potential endogeneity of initial conditions. The results reject exogeneity of initial conditions and show the importance of both duration dependence and state dependence. This implies there is the potential for any individual to become trapped in non-employment and, ideally, policy should intervene as soon as an individual begins a period of non-employment.

/pdf/state-dependence-duration-dependence-and-unobserved-3z3w8wl197.pdf

Lorenzo Cappellari

Papers

Skilled or Educated? Educational Reforms, Human Capital, and Earnings ☆

Family, Community and Long-Term Earnings Inequality

MVPROBIT: Stata module to calculate multivariate probit regression using simulated maximum likelihood

Workers' Perceptions of Job Insecurity: Do Job Security Guarantees Work?

State dependence, duration dependence and unobserved heterogeneity in the employment transitions of the over-50s