Three essays based on Experimental Economics: incentives and risk
- Autores: Noemí Herranz Zarzoso
- Directores de la Tesis: Gerardo Sabater Grande (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Jaume I ( España ) en 2019
- Idioma: inglés
- Número de páginas: 180
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Roberto Hernán González (presid.), Melanie Parravano Baro (secret.), Tarek Taher Jaber López (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Economía y Empresa por la Universidad Jaume I de Castellón
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
- español
Esta tesis arroja luz sobre dos pilares básicos de la economía experimental: los incentivos y el efecto “marco” en decisiones bajo riesgo. Los economistas experimentales estamos convencidos de la importancia de los incentivos monetarios como herramienta fundamental para motivar a los sujetos en su esfuerzo y mejorar sus resultados. En base a ello, se analiza la efectividad de diferentes estructuras de incentivos monetarios para incrementar el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes y estudiar su exceso de confianza (tanto sobre sus capacidades como el desempeño de las mismas). Por otro lado, la actitud frente al riesgo es un determinante clave en numerosas decisiones económicas y financieras, pero ésta se mide con tareas que la literatura sugiere que pueden sufrir efectos “marco”. Por ello, esta investigación reconsidera los efectos “marco” teniendo en cuenta factores que podrían confundir y haber contaminado parcialmente los resultados anteriores obtenidos en la literatura.
- English
This thesis sheds light on two of the basic pillars of experimental economics: incentives and framing effects in decision making under risk. Experimental economists are strongly convinced of the importance of monetary incentives as a vital tool in order to motivate effort and improve performance. Based on this, the effectiveness of different monetary incentive structures is analysed in order to increase students' academic performance and to study their overconfidence (both about their abilities and their performance). Our results highlight the effectiveness of real monetary incentives in order to increase students’ academic performance. Furthermore, monetary incentives reduce overestimation of potential achievements and eliminate overestimation of actual achievements. Thus, our findings suggest that overconfidence may not be a psychological bias given that it is generally conceived as a stable tendency that persists even in the presence of a subject’s consciousness of it. From this point of view, monetary incentives should not be able to affect subjects’ overconfidence as we observe in our results.
On the other hand, risk attitude is known to be a key determinant of various economic and financial choices, but it is usually measured with choice lists that the literature suggests that may suffer from framing effects (within choice list contamination). Therefore, this investigation revisits framing effects, but taking into account potential across choice list contamination effects that may have clouded previous results obtained in the literature. Our results suggest that some changes in risk preferences attributed to framing effects in the literature can really correspond to these aforementioned across choice list contamination effects.
- español
