Competition and Prosociality: A Field Experiment in Ghana

Grosch, Kerstin; Ibáñez, Marcela; Viceisza, Angelino

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3090373

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Remarkably, in our set‐up, a competitive payment regime mitigates antisocial behavior—at least compared with the other payment schemes in our experiment. At first, this insight may be surprising as these market structures are often opposed to cooperative behavior (Buser and Dreber 2015; Grosch, Ibanez, and Viceisza 2017). Yet, our results highlight that competitive market structures may work as a transparent remuneration mechanism when all workers have equal opportunities to be evaluated on fair terms.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this paper, we focus on this aspect and measure workers' antisocial behavior in a JoD game when being discriminated by a payment regime. Afterward, we implement a sequential prisoner's dilemma game to test whether a discriminatory payment regime dampens prosocial behavior as well (Buser and Dreber 2015; Grosch, Ibanez, and Viceisza 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Procedural Unfair Wage Differentials and Their Effects on Unethical Behavior

Grosch

Rau

2020

Economic Inquiry

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In this paper, we investigate how payment procedures that are deemed unfair can spur unethical behavior towards innocent coworkers in a real‐effort experiment. In our Discrimination treatment, a highly unfair payment procedure with wage differentials, half the workforce is randomly selected and paid by relative performance whereas the remaining receives no payment. A joy‐of‐destruction game measures unethical behavior subsequently. Non‐earners in Discrimination destroy significantly more than in the non‐discriminatory control treatments. In Discrimination, unethical behavior is generally high for all non‐earners, independent of individual inequality aversion and relative performance beliefs. In the control treatments, inequality aversion is the main driver of destructive behavior. (JEL C91, D03, J33, J70, M52)

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Procedural Unfair Wage Differentials and Their Effects on Unethical Behavior

Grosch

Rau

2020

Economic Inquiry

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“…One pathway is indirect. When jobs are scarce, the heightened competition can reduce prosocial behaviors, like altruism, cooperation or trust (Grosch et al, 2017;Holmström, 2017;Lazear, 1989) and increase antisocial ones, like willingness to harm (Falk and Szech, 2013). These tendencies are magnified in the context of inter-group competition, which is associated with an increase in willingness to discriminate against members of outgroups (Sääksvuori et al, 2011;Abbink et al, 2010).…”

Section: Theoretical Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building Stability between Host and Refugee Communities: Evidence from a TVET Program in Jordan and Lebanon

Ferguson¹,

Wolfe²,

Amine³

et al. 2022

Policy Research Working Papers

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The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

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Do Discriminatory Pay Regimes Unleash Antisocial Behavior?

Grosch

Rau

2017

SSRN Journal

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In this paper, we analyze how pay-regime procedures affect antisocial behavior at the workplace. In a real-effort experiment we vary two determinants of pay regimes: discrimination and justification of payments by performance. In our Discrimination treatment half of the workforce is randomly selected and promoted and participate in a tournament (high-income workers) whereas the other half receives no payment (lowincome workers). Afterwards, antisocial behavior is measured by a Joy-of-Destruction game where participants can destroy canteen vouchers. The data show that low-income workers destroy significantly more vouchers than high-income workers. Destruction behavior is driven by workers who receive payments that are not justified by performance. When all payments are justified, that is in our Competition treatment where all workers participate in a tournament, the difference vanishes. By using a treatment with random payments, we show that unjustifiably-paid workers destroy less when they had equal opportunities to receive a high payment, i.e., when they were not discriminated by the pay regime.

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Competition and Prosociality: A Field Experiment in Ghana

Cited by 4 publications

References 55 publications

Procedural Unfair Wage Differentials and Their Effects on Unethical Behavior

Procedural Unfair Wage Differentials and Their Effects on Unethical Behavior

Building Stability between Host and Refugee Communities: Evidence from a TVET Program in Jordan and Lebanon

Do Discriminatory Pay Regimes Unleash Antisocial Behavior?

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