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The mathematical framework of psychological game theory is useful for describing many forms of motivation where preferences depend directly on own or others' beliefs. It allows for incorporating, e.g., emotions, reciprocity, image concerns, and self-esteem in economic analysis. We explain how...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012834347
We propose a model of optimal decision making subject to a memory constraint. The constraint is a limit on the complexity of memory measured using Shannon’s mutual information, as in models of rational inattention; but our theory differs from that of Sims (2003) in not assuming costless memory...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013314916
In this paper we present results from a large scale real effort experiment in an online labor market investigating the effect of performance pay and two common leadership techniques: Positive expectations and specific goals. We find that positive expectations have a significant negative effect...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012891569
We demonstrate that heat inhibits learning and that school air-conditioning mitigates this effect. Student fixed effects models using 10 million PSAT-retakers show hotter school days in years before the test reduce scores, with extreme heat being particularly damaging. Weekend and summer heat...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012892281
We study the relationship between outside options and workers’ motivation to exert effort. We evaluate changes in outside options arising from age and experience cutoffs in the Austrian unemployment insurance (UI) system, and use absenteeism as a proxy for worker effort. Results indicate that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014345957
Academics are increasingly expected to engage in public discussions. We study how engagement conditions affect academics’ engagement attitudes via a survey experiment among 4,091 tenured professors in Germany. Consistent with the crowding-out of intrinsic motivation, we find less-positive...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013214346
Many organizations nowadays combine profits with a social mission. This paper reveals a new hidden benefit of the mission: its role in facilitating the emergence of efficiency wages. We show that in a standard gift-exchange principals highly underestimate agents' reciprocity and, thereby, offer...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012825994
I study how motivation shapes own and peers’ educational success. Using data from Project STAR, I find that academic motivation in early elementary school, as measured by a standardized psychological test, predicts contemporaneous and future test scores, high school GPA, and college-test...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013314953
. The quantity effort response is strongest for low productivity academics, who do not produce high quality work. High …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014264447
We conducted a randomized controlled trial involving nearly 700 customer-service representatives (CSRs) in a Canadian government service agency to study whether providing CSRs with performance feedback with or without peer comparison affected their subsequent organ donor registration rates....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014243106