
Catherine EckelTexas A&M University | TAMU · Department of Economics
Catherine Eckel
University of Virginia 1983
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231
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Introduction
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August 1983 - June 2005
June 2012 - present
Publications
Publications (231)
We ask whether social preferences measured in subjects who come to the laboratory when invited are systematically different from those of subjects who only respond when an online option is available. Subjects participated in two types of third-party (other–other) dictator games and a trust game, either in the lab or on-line. In the third party dict...
Transfers of resources in dictator games vary significantly by the characteristics of recipients. We focus on social norms and demonstrate that variation in the recipient changes both giving and injunctive norms and may offer an explanation for differences in giving. We elicit generosity using dictator games, and social norms using incentivized coo...
Introduction
Most work on social identity, defined as one's sense of self derived from membership to social groups, focuses on a single identity and its behavioral consequences. But a central insight of social identity theory is that people belong to multiple social groups, derive self-esteem from multiple identities and care to conform to the norm...
Economic preferences are often taken as given, yet evidence shows that preferences respond to life events and change over time. We examine the evolution of other-regarding preferences for a cohort of university students over 5 years, starting before they matriculate and extending one year beyond graduation. Using survey and incentivized measures of...
Combining experimental data sets from seven individual studies, including 255 asset markets with 2,031 participants, and 36,326 short-term price forecasts, we analyze the role of heterogeneity of beliefs in the organization of trading behavior by reproducing and reconsidering earlier experimental findings. Our results confirm prior evidence that pr...
This study examines whether individuals can accurately predict trust and trustworthiness in others based on their appearance. Using photos and decisions from previous experimental trust games, subjects were asked to view the photos and guess the levels of trust and trustworthiness of the individuals depicted. The results show that subjects had litt...
Many studies document a decline in citizens' interpersonal trust and trust in the US government, particularly among African Americans. Furthermore, survey research consistently shows that African Americans exhibit some of the lowest levels of trust in the US population. Trust is essential for understanding the relationship between African Americans...
We examine giving to an in-group member relative to an out-group member in the third party (other-other) dictator game. Individuals are randomly assigned to real groups under a “weak” and a “strong” condition, and also assigned to artificial groups using the minimal group paradigm. We compare the effect of the type of group on subject’s allocation...
Cronyism in firms arises when favoritism toward an ingroup affects personnel decisions. Two main motives underlie cronyism: profit, if an ingroup employee works harder; or altruism, if used to transfer resources. In a lab‐experiment trust game with naturally‐occurring groups, an employer (proposer) faces an employee (responder) who is or is not an...
We conducted lab experiments at a historically black university (HBCU), replicating the design and procedure, but not the results, of previous stereotype threat studies. The experimental design has two factors: stereotype salience (priming) and the identity of the experimenter (a less-threatening black woman vs. a more-threatening white man). Unlik...
We analyze the behavioral determinants of extreme punishment in intergroup conflict. Individuals contribute to team production by a tedious real effort task. Teams compete for a prize in asymmetric tournaments. Asymmetries are implemented as differences in the time available to complete the task and are generated by nature or by the decisions of on...
How can charities solicit high-capacity donors to provide the funds for matching grants and leadership gifts? In conjunction with Texas A&M University’s fundraising organizations, we conducted a field experiment to study whether high-income donors respond to nonpersonal solicitations. We also designed the experiment to test the impact of allowing f...
In this Chapter, we define, categorize and describe how Lab-in-the-Field experiments answer questions that concern specific subject populations or particular contexts, concentrating on economics-style experiments in particular. We discuss how to identify questions that require Lab-in-the-Field methods. We then explain how to develop a Lab-in-the-Fi...
In this Chapter, we define, categorize and describe how Lab-in-the-Field experiments answer questions that concern specific subject populations or particular contexts, concentrating on economics-style experiments in particular. We discuss how to identify questions that require Lab-in-the-Field methods. We then explain how to develop a Lab-in-the-Fi...
We offer a unified conceptual, behavioral, and econometric framework for optimal fundraising that deals with both synergies and discrepancies between approaches from Economics, Marketing, Psychology and Sociology. The purpose is to offer a framework that can bridge differences and open a dialogue between disciplines in order to facilitate optimal f...
An influential result in the literature on charitable giving is that matching subsidies dominate rebate subsidies in raising funds. We investigate whether this result extends to ‘unit donation’ schemes, a popular alternative form of soliciting donations. There, the donors’ choices are about the number of units of a charitable good to fund at a give...
We use “real donation” laboratory experiments to compare independent fundraising, where donation requests from different charities arrive sequentially to potential donors, with coordinated fundraising, where donation requests from different charities arrive simultaneously. We find that coordinated fundraising generates significantly larger total do...
We address gender differences in leader effectiveness and followers’ perceptions of leaders’ effectiveness. Our experimental design removes gender-linked factors that might affect leadership success, such as risk-taking and competitiveness. We employ a repeated weakest-link coordination game. Subjects first complete 10 periods without a leader, and...
We examine the impact of perceived worthiness and financial self‐interest on charitable giving. Both participants and recipients come from a low‐income, predominantly African‐American community in the United States. To examine this issue, we introduce a “Comparative Dictator Game,” where participants make dictator allocations for four possible reci...
Charities operate at different levels: national, state, or local. We test the effect of the level of the organization on charitable giving in a sample of adults in two Texas communities. Subjects make four charitable giving “dictator game” decisions from a fixed amount of money provided by the experimenter. Three decisions target different charitab...
In many principal-agent settings, the effort provided by the agent benefits a third party. In these settings, the quality of the work is determined, at least in part, by pro-social motivations. We present lab experiments that utilize a new three-player trust game to examine one such setting, care provision. Players include a principal, an agent, an...
This paper introduces a strategic element into the dictator game by allowing recipients to select their dictator. Recipients are presented with the photographs of two dictators and the envelopes containing their allocations, and are then asked to select which dictator’s gift they would like to receive. The recipient is paid the contents of the enve...
We examine the impact of social distance in dictator game giving. The study is conducted in a field setting with high stakes (two days’ wages). The sample is a representative sample from eleven low-income Mexican villages. Subjects make multiple dictator decisions simultaneously, in a comparative dictator game. We show the relationship between soci...
Experts bring economic tools to bear on philanthropic activities, addressing topics that range from the determinants of giving to the effectiveness of fundraising techniques.
Economists are increasingly aware of the need to better understand philanthropic activities. In this book, economists address a variety of topics related to the economics of p...
Several studies present evidence of correlations between prenatal testosterone exposure measured with the 2D:4D ratio and behaviors such as pro-social behavior, risk and patient attitudes, and self-employment. Individuals exposed prenatally to higher levels of testosterone have lower levels of risk aversion, higher levels of patience and invest mor...
We reinvestigate the question first posed by Glaeser et al. (2000): Do survey measures about trust predict actual trusting behavior? This important study established that the behavior in an incentivized trust game is not correlated with the responses to the most widely used survey measures of trust. We conduct a replication and a reinvestigation of...
The Holt and Laury (American Economic Review, 92(5), 1644–1655, 2002) mechanism (HL) is the most widely-used method for eliciting risk preferences in economics. Participants typically make ten decisions with different variance options, with one of these choices randomly chosen for actual payoff. For this mechanism to provide an accurate measure of...
Several studies have shown a relationship between the stocks of migrants and country-level investment in the home country; however the mechanism through which this relationship operates is still unexplored. We use a field experiment in which participants who are recent immigrants send information about risky decisions to others in their social netw...
We conduct a framed field experiment in two Dallas neighborhoods to examine how common identity affects individual contributions to local public goods. The participants’ common identity is primed to make neighborhood membership salient before individuals make donations to local non-profit organizations. We find that the identity treatment is sensit...
Eckel and Füllbrunn (2015) report a striking gender effect in experimental asset markets: Markets with only men produce substantial price bubbles while markets with only women sometimes produce negative bubbles. A possible explanation might be that common expectations about the behavior of men and women in a market drive the bubble formation. If we...
Political trust – of citizens in government, parliament or political parties – has been centre stage in political science for more than half a century, reflecting ongoing concerns about the legitimacy of representative democracy. This Handbook offers the first truly global perspective on political trust and integrates the conceptual, theoretical, m...
Big data, that is, data that are byproducts of our lives rather than designed for research purposes, are the newest of the information highway innovations. One of the important challenges to social and behavioral science data collection, curation, and dissemination for the foreseeable future is to link diverse forms of data in a way that is cumulat...
We reinvestigate the question first posed by Glaeser, Laibson, Scheinkman and Soutter (2000, GLSS hereafter): What is the best measure of trust for predicting trusting behavior? This important study, cited over 2,100 times, established that the behavior in the investment game, an incentivized measure of trust, is not correlated with the responses t...
Risky Curves: On the empirical failure of expected utility theory, Daniel Friedman , R. Mark Isaac , Duncan James and Shyam Sunder . Routledge, 2014, xiii + 137 pages. - Volume 32 Issue 3 - Catherine C. Eckel
When groups compete for resources, some groups will be more successful than others, forcing out less successful groups. Group-level selection is the most extreme form of group competition, where the weaker group ceases to exist, becoming extinct. We implement group-level selection in a controlled laboratory experiment in order to study its impact o...
Contribution stage.
It is the same for each treatment.
(TIF)
Information screen after the first block for Group Extinction and Group Comparison Low Earning Groups.
In both treatments subjects are given the same information. Only in the Group Extinction treatment do those groups exit the experiment.
(TIF)
Percentage of Group Contributions in the First Block broken out by treatment.
Standard error bars are overlaid on the figure.
(TIF)
Distributions of decisions across the First Block (periods 1–10).
The vertical axis indicates the percentage of contributions to the public good. The horizontal axis indicates the amount of the contribution to the public good. Values at the extreme left indicate zero contributions. Values at the extreme right indicate contributing everything.
(TIF)
Distributions of decisions across all 20 periods.
The vertical axis indicates the percentage of contributions to the public good. The horizontal axis indicates the amount of the contribution to the public good. Values at the extreme left indicate zero contributions. Values at the extreme right indicate contributing everything.
(TIF)
Comparison of Intact Groups Across Block 1 and Block 2.
A comparison of the performance of intact groups that played both in Block 1 (horizontal axes) and Block 2 (vertical axes). Any marker above the 45-degree dashed line represents a group that contributes more in the second block than in the first, and the opposite for markers below the line. No...
Information screen after the first block for Individual Extinction Low Earner.
(TIF)
P-values for Wilcoxon Mann-Whitney tests for pairwise treatment differences.
The comparisons are for all 20 periods, the first block and the second block. Each comparison includes contributions and earnings information. In the table BSL = Baseline; GC = Group Comparison; IE = Individual Extinction; and GE = Group Extinction.
(PDF)
Percentage of Group Contributions in the Second Block broken out by treatment.
Standard error bars are overlaid on the figure.
(TIF)
Distributions of decisions across the Second Block (periods 11–20).
The vertical axis indicates the percentage of contributions to the public good. The horizontal axis indicates the amount of the contribution to the public good. Values at the extreme left indicate zero contributions. Values at the extreme right indicate contributing everything.
(TI...
Disaggregated Plots of Baseline data.
We use data from 2 Baseline experiments: (i) Baseline with surprise restart (10 + 10 rounds: 6 independent group observations) and (ii) Baseline repeated for 20 rounds (7 independent group observations). Apart from the difference in period 11 we do not find statistically significant differences between them (se...
Information screen after the first block for Individual Extinction High Earner.
(TIF)
Information screen after the first block for Group Extinction and Group Comparison High Earning Groups.
In both treatments subjects are given the same information.
(TIF)
Details about Experimental Design.
(PDF)
Individual Level Regressions (Panel Random-effects generalized least squares).
An additional control for the period is included. Baseline treatment is the omitted category.
(PDF)
Averages by groups across periods for the baseline treatment.
The first part of the table indicates the total average MUs given by the group (out of a possible 200 MUs that could be given in each period). The second part of the table presents Wilcoxon rank-sum tests between the Baseline treatments.
(PDF)
Average contributions by Winners and Losers.
Average percentage contributions by individuals are plotted for each period. 95 percent confidence intervals are plotted separately for each treatment and type of individual. The data are for the first Block of data. Ex post we know who remained in the experiment and who did not. We use this information...
Information screen after contribution stage.
It is the same for each treatment.
(TIF)
Written Instructions for Experiment.
(PDF)
Means (standard deviations) of contributions at the group level.
Means are pooled over all periods and then broken out by the first and second blocks.
(PDF)
Individual Level Regressions (Panel Random-effects generalized least squares).
Analysis is across all periods and then by first and second block. Baseline treatment is the omitted category.
(PDF)
This paper compares the effectiveness of rebate and matching subsidies in the field and, to our knowledge, is the first to control for potential bias introduced by the failure to account for donors' awareness of the offered subsidies. Where previous field experiments have typically been limited to either rebate subsidies or matching subsidies, we s...
The use of directed giving - allowing donors to target their gifts to specific organizations or functions - is pervasive in fundraising, yet little is known about its effectiveness. We conduct a field experiment at a public university in which prospective donors are presented with either an opportunity to donate to the unrestricted Annual Fund, or...
We develop a new protocol to elicit preferences over gambles that contain large, asymmetric, low-probability outcomes. Subjects first select their preferred choice from a set of zero-skewness gambles, providing a measure of their preferences for risk as standard deviation. The new lottery choices have the same expected payoffs and standard deviatio...
Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the US, with a significantly higher fraction of African Americans who are obese than whites. Yet there is little understanding of why some individuals become obese while others do not. We conduct a lab-in-field experiment in a low-income African American community to investigate whether risk and time pref...
This paper replicates four highly cited, classic lab experimental studies in the provision of public goods. The studies consider the impact of marginal per capita return and group size; framing (as donating to or taking from the public good); the role of confusion in the public goods game; and the effectiveness of peer punishment. Considerable atte...
Giving to private charities is commonplace, and the chance to direct one’s gift is a standard fundraising strategy. But voluntary donations to government organizations are less widely known, and the impact of the opportunity to direct a gift is unexplored. We investigate the effect of directed giving on voluntary contributions to government organiz...
We argue that sociology has not ignored the rational actor in ways sometimes claimed by economists. At the same time, we offer examples of how sociological studies, most especially experimental sociology, augment and inform economics about the role of social identity in decision making. We highlight some ways in which economics and sociology develo...
We investigate the effectiveness of two leadership institutions in each of two games: a weakest link and a linear public good game. An “Exemplar” leader is a first mover who commits to a level of contribution; a “Manager” is a first mover who makes cheap talk suggestions to the team members. Our results show that both leadership institutions reduce...
Do women and men behave differently in financial asset markets?
Our results from an asset market experiment show a marked gender
difference in producing speculative price bubbles. Mixed markets
show intermediate values, and a meta-analysis of 35 markets from
different studies confirms the inverse relationship between the magnitude
of price bubbles...
http://chronicle.com/article/Big-Data-Big-Obstacles/151421/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
Uniform customer-class pricing can do much of the work of congestion-based or time-of-day pricing in communication or wireless networks. A monopolist exploits differences in the stochastic characteristics of demands. If demands are correlated and the firm faces a capacity constraint, then it can set prices to reduce the variability of aggregate dem...
We conduct a field experiment with low-income subjects in Dallas, Texas. We examine voluntary, informal risk sharing using a visual representation of the solidarity game developed for low-literacy populations. We find substantially more ‘fixed gift to loser’ behavior and less ‘egotistical’ behavior than in previous studies. Individuals who display...
Previous research demonstrates that individuals vary in their social preferences. Less well-understood is how group composition affects the behavior of different social preference types. Does one bad apple really spoil the bunch? This paper exogenously identifies experimental participants’ social preferences, then systematically assigns individuals...
Catherine C. Eckel of Texas A&M University reviews, “Emotions and Consumption Behaviour” by Isabella Soscia. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Examines how emotions function in consumers from both a psychological and a managerial perspective. Discusses consumer emotions and behavior; happiness and unhappiness; pride and sense of guilt; ang...
We conduct a framed field experiment in two Dallas neighborhoods to examine how common identity affects individual contributions to local public goods. The participants’ common identity is primed to make neighborhood membership salient before individuals make donations to local non-profit organizations. We find that the effect of the identity prime...
We present lab experiments that utilize a new three-player game designed to capture key features of care provision. We discuss results from the baseline game and test two sets of treatments designed to gauge the impact of potential policy interventions. The first varies the budget subsidy provided to the care manager, and the second alters the effe...
This paper addresses the question of what determines a poor credit score. We compare estimated credit scores with measures of impulsivity, time preference, risk attitude, and trustworthiness, in an effort to determine the preferences that underlie credit behavior. Data is collected using an incentivized decision-making lab experiment, together with...
The more prepared people are, the less harm they will suffer when disaster strikes. Yet anecdotal and empirical evidence shows that people overestimate their preparedness and are underprepared. While a robust literature has matured around hazards, risk, and vulnerability, and disaster policy, politics, and management, the literature about individua...
Do women and men behave differently in financial asset markets? Our results from an asset market experiment using the Smith, Suchaneck, and Williams (1988) framework show marked gender difference in producing speculative price bubbles. Using 35 markets from different studies, a meta-analysis confirms the inverse relationship between the magnitude o...
Purpose
To examine the relationship between physical activity stages of change and preferences for financial risk and time.
Design
A cross-sectional, community-based study.
Setting
A low-income, urban, African-American neighborhood.
Subjects
One hundred sixty-nine adults.
Measures
Self-reported physical activity stages of change—precontemplatio...