Astrid Matthey’s research while affiliated with Max-Planck-Institut für Ökonomik and other places

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Publications (24)


Average efforts per round and treatment
Average minimum efforts in groups per round and treatment
Distribution of individual efforts per round and treatment
Distribution of team minimum efforts per round and treatment
Punishment and disapproval points assignment by effort levels

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Punishing the weakest link - Voluntary sanctions and efficient coordination in the minimum effort game
  • Article
  • Publisher preview available

June 2023

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36 Reads

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1 Citation

Theory and Decision

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Astrid Matthey

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Ondřej Rydval

Using a laboratory experiment, we examine whether voluntary sanctions induce subjects to coordinate more efficiently in a repeated minimum-effort game. While most groups first experience Pareto inferior coordination in a baseline treatment, the level of effort increases substantially once ex post sanctioning opportunities are introduced, that is, when one can assign costly punishment points to other group members to reduce their payoffs. We compare the effect of this voluntary punishment possibility with the effect of ex post costless communication, which in contrast to the punishment treatment increases efforts only temporarily and fails to bring the players to higher payoff equilibria permanently. Our results indicate that decentralized sanctions can play an important role as a coordination device in Pareto-ranked coordination settings. They also suggest that the motivations behind voluntary sanctions may be more general than usually put forth in the literature on cooperation games.

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Actions and the Self: I Give, Therefore I am?

August 2021

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45 Reads

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5 Citations

Self-signaling models predict less selfish behavior in a probabilistic giving setting as individuals are expected to invest in a pro-social identity. However, there is also substantial evidence that people tend to exploit situational excuses for selfish choices (for instance, uncertainty) and behave more selfishly. We contrast these two motivations (identity management and self-deception) experimentally in order to test which one is more prevalent in a reciprocal giving setting. Trustees' back transfer choices are elicited for five different transfer levels of the trustor. Moreover, we ask trustees to provide their back transfer schedule for different scenarios that vary the implementation probability of the back transfer. This design allows us to identify subjects who reciprocate and analyze how these reciprocators respond when self-image relevant factors are varied. Our results indicate that self-deception is prevalent when subjects make the back transfer choice. Twice as many subjects seem to exploit situational excuses than subjects who appear to invest in a pro-social identity. JEL classifications : C72, C91, D80, D91


More Than Outcomes: The Role of Self-Image in Other-Regarding Behavior

December 2015

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34 Reads

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3 Citations

Review of Behavioral Economics

We conduct a modified dictator game in order to analyze the role self-image concerns play in other-regarding behavior. While we generally follow Konow (2000), a cognitive dissonance-based model of other-regarding behavior in dictator games, we relax one of its assumptions as we allow for individual heterogeneity among individuals’ standards of behavior. Subjects’ self-image, their belief regarding the average socially appropriate behavior of others and our proxies for the cognitive dissonance costs are positively correlated with the dictator game choices.We also find that subjects whose choices involve two psychologically inconsistent cognitions indeed report higher levels of experienced conflict and take more time for their decisions (our proxies for cognitive dissonance).



Table 1 Overview of the four studies 
Table 2 Regressions for studies 1-4 
Table 3 Categorization of subjects in study 3 
Table 4 Categorization of subjects in study 4 
On the Independence of History: Experience Spill-overs between Experiments

September 2013

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168 Reads

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21 Citations

Theory and Decision

A central understanding in experimental economics is that subjects’ decisions in the lab are independent of history. We test whether this assumption of between-experiment independence is indeed justified. We analyze experiments with an allocation decision (like a dictator or ultimatum game) and find that participation in previous experiments tends to increase the amount subjects allocate to themselves. Hence, independence between experiments cannot be presumed if subjects participate repeatedly. The finding has implications for the interpretation of previous allocation decision results and deserves attention when running future experiments.


Reform of Russian Power Industry 0

October 2011

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16 Reads

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2 Citations

This paper takes a critical look at the challenges and achievements in the reform of the Russian power industry. Russian politics emphasized restructuring and pri- vatization, which are widely seen as preconditions for attracting private investment. However, progress along this line has been slow and there are is little hope that the current deadlock may be overcome anytime soon. This paper argues that the main problems of the sectors originate from the regulatory system, which is why tari reform is the key issue.


Figure 1: Distribution of reaction times by types 
Table 2 . Multinomial logit with type as dependent variable.
Do I Really Want to Know? A Cognitive Dissonance-Based Explanation of Other-Regarding Behavior

February 2011

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265 Reads

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81 Citations

We investigate to what extent genuine social preferences can explain observed other-regarding behavior. In a dictator game variant subjects can choose whether to learn about the consequences of their choice for the receiver. We find that a majority of subjects showing other-regarding behavior when the payoffs of the receiver are known, choose to ignore these consequences if possible. This behavior is inconsistent with preferences about outcomes. Other-regarding behavior may also be explained by avoiding cognitive dissonance as in Konow (2000). Our experiment's choice data is in line with this approach. In addition, we successfully relate individual behavior to proxies for cognitive dissonance.


Less is more: The influence of aspirations and priming on well-being

April 2010

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93 Reads

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43 Citations

Journal of Cleaner Production

If resource consumption is to be reduced through economic “de-growth”, individuals in industrialized countries may have to accept a reduction in their consumption levels. In democratic societies, implementing this process requires the consent of a majority of the population. However, as long as people have high reference levels of consumption, lower consumption will induce feelings of loss, and hence evoke resistance. This paper summarizes recent experimental evidence on some of the factors that determine the utility costs involved in decreasing consumption. The results suggest that the acceptance of economic de-growth would be facilitated if people's material aspirations were moderated, and the extent to which material achievements are emphasized in our daily environment were reduced.An analysis of the financial and economic crisis that developed during 2008 suggests that it will not contribute to either of these points. Rather, by increasing the public's focus on the economic sphere even beyond pre-crisis levels, it may lead to a further decrease in the acceptance of de-growth policies in the population.


The Influence of Priming on Reference States

March 2010

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34 Reads

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10 Citations

Experimental and empirical evidence shows that the utility an individual derives from a certain state depends on the reference state she compares it to. According to economic theory, the reference state is determined by past, present and future outcomes of either the individual herself or her reference group. The experiment described in this paper suggests that, in addition, reference states depend to a significant degree on environmental factors not relevant for outcomes. It indicates that reference states - and hence utility - can relatively easily be influenced without changing people’s outcomes, e.g., through priming.


On the Formation and Manipulation of Reference States

November 2008

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26 Reads

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1 Citation

Experimental and empirical evidence shows that the utility an individual de-rives from a certain state depends on the reference state she compares it to. According to economic theory, this reference state is determined by the past, present and future outcomes of either the individual herself or her reference group. The experiment described in this paper suggests that, in addition, refer-ence states depend to a significant degree on non outcome-relevant environmental factors. It shows that reference states -and hence utility -can relatively easily be manipulated without changing people's outcomes.


Citations (14)


... 8 Needless to say, no theoretical model with standard preferences would predict that an agent would choose the taking game. 9 For another use of this phrase, see Regner and Matthey [56]. 10 We refer to the rationalization in psychology, meaning the defense mechanisms in which apparent logical reasons are given to justify behavior that is motivated by unconscious instinctual impulses. ...

Reference:

Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games
Actions and the Self: I Give, Therefore I am?

... Inclusion of efficiently playing agents and exclusion of inefficiently playing agents has the flavor of reward and punishment, respectively, two mechanisms much investigated in cooperation problems 43,[45][46][47][48][49] . However, for coordination games, very little is known about the effect of punishment 50,51 and, to our knowledge, nothing about the effect of reward. We do not observe a significant effect of including efficiently playing agents into one's neighborhood, which contrasts with the positive effect of reward identified in some cooperation problems 49 . ...

Efficiency and Punishment in a Coordination Game: Voluntary Sanctions in the Minimum Effort Game
  • Citing Article
  • January 2015

SSRN Electronic Journal

... Third, our study relates to the small strand of the literature that investigates repeated participation in lab experiments. Matthey & Regner (2013) find a negative correlation between generosity in allocation decisions and the number of previous rounds of participation in other experimental sessions. In a similar vein, Benndorf, Moellers, & Normann (2017) find that experienced subjects show less trustworthiness and trust than inexperienced subjects. ...

On the Independence of History: Experience Spill-overs between Experiments

Theory and Decision

... There is a wealth of potential for this with higher aspirations associated with higher academic performance and likelihood of attaining tertiary education, higher wages and job prestige as well as drive for self betterment (Kiyama, 2010;Leung, Chen, and Lam, 2010;Staff, Harris, Sabates, and Briddell, 2010;Koo and Fishbach, 2010). Augmenting aspirations may also reduce risk taking behaviour through establishing realistic expectations or minimising hedonic adaptation (the tendency for updating of goals to erode gains in SWB) (March, 1988;Matthey, 2008;Easterlin, McVey, Switek, Sawangfa, and Zweig, 2010;Graham and Oswald, 2010;Lucas, 2007). Also it is hoped exposing further limitations of ...

On the Formation and Manipulation of Reference States
  • Citing Article
  • November 2008

... The term "economic growth" will be defined as the growth of real gross domestic product (GDP) (Roser 2013). For many politicians, policy experts and decision-makers economic growth is the only way to increase the wealth of everyone (Matthey 2010). Even the widely used Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations, include the goal to "promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth…" (United Nations 2022, para. ...

Less is more: The influence of aspirations and priming on well-being
  • Citing Article
  • April 2010

Journal of Cleaner Production

... 4 Based on the type, priming can occur via the speed of processing (Reisberg 2007), via items of a similar form or meaning (Biederman and Cooper 1992), via exposure repetition (Forster and Davis 1984), via items sharing similar semantic features (Ferrand and New 2003), or via stimuli that trigger visuomotor system effects (Klotz and Wolff 1995). In addition, priming has been shown to influence subsequent behavior in the context of various stimuli: visual, spatial, physical, olfactory, and verbal cues (Kay et al. 2004, Biederman andCooper 1992), and most recently temporal stimuli (Trope and Liberman 2000, Huber et al. 2002, Blandin and Dehaene 2002, Fujita et al. 2006, Kivetz and Tyler 2007, Ebert and Prelec 2007, Mannetti et al. 2009, Naccache, Zauberman et al. 2009, Yashar and Lami 2010, Bauer, Muller and Usher 2009 For recent economic studies that explicitly consider priming in individual decision-making, see Matthey (2010), Benjamin, Choi, and Strickland (2010), and Cohn et al. (2015). 6 Shah, Shafir, and Mullainathan (2015) document various recent behavioral biases, including priming, in the context of economic decision-making. ...

The Influence of Priming on Reference States

... The operationalization that has received the most attention is strategic ignorance. It describes experimental setups which allow people to avoid information on the outcome that a self-profiting decision has for the other person, liberating people to act selfishly without appearing to be selfish to others and possibly themselves (DWK; Bartling et al., 2014;Bell et al., 2017;D'Adda et al., 2018;Ehrich & Irwin, 2005;Grossman, 2014;Matthey & Regner, 2011;Momsen & Ohndorf, 2020). Another operationalization of MWR is the introduction of uncertainty between behavior and outcome, meaning experimental manipulations preventing the recipient from knowing whether a decision has been made by the agent or by another entity (DWK). ...

Do I Really Want to Know? A Cognitive Dissonance-Based Explanation of Other-Regarding Behavior

... Flavin (1981) points out that whenever a household observes that its current realization of income is greater than what it had anticipated, it revises upward its expectations of future income, and because this means it is revising upward its permanent income, it also revises its consumption decisions accordingly. Furthermore, it is likely that a household's expectation about its future consumption has an impact on its current level of utility (Abeler, Falk, Goette, & Huffman, 2011;Kőszegi & Rabin, 2009;Matthey, 2008). ...

Yesterday's Expectation of Tomorrow Determines What You Do Today: The Role of Reference-Dependent Utility from Expectations
  • Citing Article
  • January 2008

SSRN Electronic Journal