Variation In Incentives Research Articles

Comparative analysis of decision making factors of hybrid and emission free heat source users in single family houses

Aim/purpose – Energy is traditionally produced using fossil fuels as raw materials, which impacts the environment negatively. Due to the scarcity of fossil fuel supplies, rising prices of energy carriers, and global trends, consumers are turning to renewable energy sources (RES) for home heating. The aim of this study was to determine whether the choice of house heating system using different sources than fossil fuels is driven by any additional components of single-family house users’ purchasing decisions besides cost. Based on research results, the prospects for further transformation of thermal ener- gy in single-family housing in Poland towards RES were determined. Design/methodology/approach – The research on the inhabitants of single-family houses was conducted in December 2022 in Poland. The research method used was a survey using the CATI and CAWI techniques. 600 respondents filled out the question- naire. The results were statistically analyzed. A non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test (non- -parametric ANOVA) and a post-hoc test were used. The distributions’ normality and the variances’ homogeneity were measured using Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Brownian– –Forsythe tests. Calculations were performed using Statistica software. Findings – The choice of heating energy source in single-family houses, taking CO2 emis- sions into account, is not dictated by income level. Instead, it is determined by the number of people in the household. More numerous households opt for a zero-emission heat source. Households using emission-based heating energy sources are significantly more driven by the cost of using heating appliances; their purchase price, reliability, and product quality are more important than those using zero-emission methods. The partial use of renewable energy source solutions promotes further investment in emission-free heat sources. Research implications/limitations – The analysis illustrates the state of thermal trans- formation in single-family houses during the energy transition process at the national level. A limitation of the research is that it samples only one EU country struggling with too high CO2 emissions compared to other countries. Originality/value/contribution – A unique approach used in this study is to address the variation in incentives for renewable energy purchasing decisions, considering CO2 emissions. This aspect, although noticeable to some extent, is not directly taken into account by users who do not have the tools to assess their CO2 emissions. However, the proposed research approach showed that the CO2 emission level of a heating system is a factor differentiating some aspects of the decision-making process of system users. In particular, it showed what elements of the decision are essential in households that have not yet taken any action towards energy transformation. Keywords: energy, decision-making process, heat source, hybrid heat sources, emis- sion-free heat sources, consumers’ characteristics. JEL Classification: Q56, G51, O13.

Policy preferences, unity, and floor dissent in the European Parliament

ABSTRACT To what extent do individual members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have policy and ideological incentives to vote against their European Political Groups (EPGs) and national party delegations (NPDs), and how often they act on these by voting against the party line? Documenting over-time variations in incentives to dissent in floor votes using five waves of surveys of MEPs, covering the years 1994–2019, this article shows that while these have generally decreased over time, they remain substantial. Further, by combining individual floor voting records on legislation and individual MEP survey responses for the 2004–2009 EP, the article shows that while individual MEP preferences significantly influence the decision to dissent from the EPG line in floor votes, this is not the case for voting against their NPD, lending support to the argument that the primary principal for MEPs is their national party, not their EPG.

Early Retirement and Social Class: A Health-Giving Choice for All?

AbstractEmpirical evidence on the effect of the timing of retirement on post-retirement health is so far inconclusive regarding the causal nature of this relationship, and little is known about how the effect varies by social class. This paper uses birth cohort variation in incentives to postpone early retirement in an instrumental variable framework to estimate the causal effect of early retirement on post-retirement health as indicated by visits to general practitioners (GP) and mortality. Drawing on Danish administrative register data, results from instrumental variable regressions suggest that for men, the effect of early retirement at age 60 on GP visits is positive and short-term, if anything, as it reduces early retirees’ number of visits to the GP compared to men who retire later than at age 60. These effects, among men, are particularly driven by members of the skilled manual working class. For women, the results show no evidence of a health effect of early retirement on GP visits. Additionally, for mortality, the results provided no evidence of a health effect of early retirement, irrespective of social class and gender.

Interventions to promote technology adoption in firms: A systematic review.

Interventions to promote technology adoption in firms: A systematic review.

Incentives, performance and choking in darts

This paper examines how within-match variation in incentives affects the performance of darts players. The game of darts offers an attractive naturally occurring research setting, because performance can be observed at the individual level and without obscuring effects of risk considerations and behavior of others. We analyze four data sets covering a total of 29,381 darts matches of professional, amateur, and youth players. We find that amateur and youth players display a sizable performance decrease at decisive moments. Professional players appear less susceptible of such choking under pressure. Our results speak to a growing literature on the limits of increasing incentives as a recipe for better performance.

Electoral incentives and Public Employees’ Retirement Systems in Brazilian municipalities

This paper tests whether Brazilian mayors manipulate the funding policies of Public Employees’ Retirement Systems (PERS) owing to electoral motivations, using an unexplored dataset containing the statements of contributions prepared by municipal governments that we match to four nationwide elections. In Brazil, PERS are active in more than 2000 municipalities and must collect contributions from public-sector employees and local governments to meet their defined benefit promises. The institutional context provides variation in both reelection incentives and the funding of PERS that allows for credible estimation: term limits and close races generate exogenous variation in incentives, and the large increases in contribution rates mandated by a national pension reform, implemented by municipalities with different lags, provide the necessary variation in the funding practices. Overall, the regression discontinuity estimates support the hypothesis that mayors seeking reelection in competitive environments reduce the flows of funding to municipal PERS. Moreover, the results confirm the notion that while politicians have benefited from the changing legislation and a lack of supervision in the past, less room for strategic maneuvering has been open recently.

Measuring costly effort using the slider task

Using real effort to implement costly activities increases the likelihood that the motivations that drive effort provision in real life carry over to the laboratory. However, unobserved differences between subjects in the cost of real effort make quantitative prediction problematic. In this paper we present the slider task, which was designed by us to overcome the drawbacks of real-effort tasks. The slider task allows the researcher to collect precise and repeated observations of effort provision from the same subjects in a short time frame. The resulting high-quality panel data allow sophisticated statistical analysis. We illustrate these advantages in two ways. First, we show how to use panel data from the slider task to improve precision by controlling for persistent unobserved heterogeneity. Second, we show how to estimate effort costs at the subject level by exploiting within-subject variation in incentives across repetitions of the slider task. We also provide z-Tree code and practical guidance to help researchers implement the slider task.

Incentives, Performance and Choking in Darts

This paper examines how within-match variation in incentives affects the performance of darts players. The game of darts offers an attractive naturally occurring research setting, because performance can be observed at the individual level and without obscuring effects of risk considerations and behavior of others. We analyze four data sets covering a total of 29,381 darts matches of professional, amateur, and youth players. We find that amateur and youth players display a sizable performance decrease at decisive moments. Professional players appear less susceptible of such choking under pressure. Our results speak to a growing literature on the limits of increasing incentives as a recipe for better performance.

Measuring Costly Effort Using the Slider Task

Using real effort to implement costly activities increases the likelihood that the motivations that drive effort provision in real life carry over to the laboratory. However, unobserved differences between subjects in the cost of real effort make quantitative prediction problematic. In this paper we present the slider task, which was designed by us to overcome the drawbacks of real effort tasks. The slider task allows the researcher to collect precise and repeated observations of effort provision from the same subjects in a short time frame. The resulting high-quality panel data allow sophisticated statistical analysis. We illustrate these advantages in two ways. First, we show how to use panel data from the slider task to improve precision by controlling for persistent unobserved heterogeneity. Second, we show how to estimate effort costs at the subject level by exploiting within-subject variation in incentives across repetitions of the slider task. We also provide z-Tree code and practical guidance to help researchers implement the slider task.

‘Making it Count’: Incentives, Student Effort and Performance

SummaryThe paper examines how incentives to participate in on-line assessments (quizzes) affect students’ effort and performance. Our identification strategy exploits within-student weekly variation in incentives to attempt on-line quizzes. We find that tournament incentives and participation incentives are ineffective in increasing quiz participation. In contrast, making the quiz count towards the final grade substantially increases participation. We find no evidence of displacement of effort between weeks. Using a natural experiment which provides variation in assessment weighting of the quizzes between two cohorts, we find that affected students obtain better examination grades. We estimate the return to 10% assessment weighting to be around 0.27 of a standard deviation in the in-term examination grade. We find no evidence that assessment weighting has unintended consequences, i.e. that increased quiz effort displaces effort over the year, reduces other forms of effort or reduces (effort and thus) performance in other courses. Finally, assessment weighting induced effort increases most for students at and below median ability, resulting in a reduction of the grade gap by 17%.

How Does Social Security Claiming Respond to Incentives?

ABSTRACT:Most women receive some Social Security benefits based upon their husbands’ earnings history, but husbands’ benefit claiming is inconsistent with maximizing lifetime benefits for the couple. I show that husbands’ claiming behavior responds to the actuarial incentives from their retired worker benefits. Not responding to incentives from spouse and survivor formulas reduces wives’ lifetime benefits. Rule changes to the Social Security benefit calculation, the age difference between spouses, and the relative strength of the wife’s labor force history creates variation in incentives. Segments of the population predicted to be more responsive to incentives provides similar results to the main specification.

Does fundraising create new giving?

Despite an extensive literature on the impacts of a variety of charitable fundraising techniques, little is known about whether these activities increase overall giving or merely cause donors to substitute away from other causes. Using detailed data from Donorschoose.org, an online platform linking teachers with prospective donors, I examine the extent to which matching grants for donations to certain requests affect giving to others. Eligibility for matches is determined in entirely by observable attributes of the request, providing an exogenous source of variation in incentives to donate between charities. I find that, while matches increase giving to eligible requests, they do not appear to crowd out giving to similar ones, either contemporaneously or over time.

Incentive mechanisms, loan decisions and policy rationing

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether negative incentives in the pay-for-performance mechanism would trigger loan officers to strategically reject potentially good loans. If so, what is the feasible solution to alleviate the problem. Design/methodology/approach A framed field experiment was conducted to test loan decision behaviors using loan officers from Rural Credit Cooperatives in Shandong, China. A 2 by 2 between-subject design was adopted to generate variation in incentives and prior information about credit risks. Findings Results showed that loan officers did ration credit by rejecting more loans when facing risks of personal income loss. However, providing risk information about the application pool boosted the approval rate and offset the behavioral responses by a roughly same magnitude. Research limitations/implications Findings in this study suggest that certain institutional settings can result in credit rationing via strategic loan misclassification. Further, information sometimes generates similar effects as those costly incentives or mechanisms that are not implementable in practice. Originality/value This study adopted an innovative monetized experimental design that allows researchers to examine the (otherwise unobservable) trade-offs between Type I and Type II error in loan misclassification as incentives change. In addition, an anchoring prior information treatment is used to solicit the relative power of almost costless information and costly monetary incentives, and to point out a potentially feasible solution.

Contest Incentives, Effort Levels and Betting Markets in European Football

Tournament theory (Lazear and Rosen, 1981) predicts that effort supplied in contests varies with the incentive structure. Previous research finds that outcomes in individual and team sports events reflect variable effort supply by contestants. We develop evidence that a market-based measure of expected outcomes in contests, betting odds, also reflect variable effort supply. Empirical analysis of more than 40,000 regular season football matches in 10 top domestic European leagues shows that betting odds on matches reflect variation in incentives to supply effort generated by the structure of the league, in terms of the promotion and relegation structure and qualification for pan-European competitions, and the specific position of the teams on the league table.

Higher Incentive Payments in Medicare Advantage's Pay-for-Performance Program Did Not Improve Quality But Did Increase Plan Offerings.

To evaluate the effects of the size of financial bonuses on quality of care and the number of plan offerings in the Medicare Advantage Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration. Publicly available data from CMS from 2009 to 2014 on Medicare Advantage plan quality ratings, the counties in the service area of each plan, and the benchmarks used to construct plan payments. The Medicare Advantage Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration began in 2012. Under the Demonstration, all Medicare Advantage plans were eligible to receive bonus payments based on plan-level quality scores (star ratings). In some counties, plans were eligible to receive bonus payments that were twice as large as in other counties. We used this variation in incentives to evaluate the effects of bonus size on star ratings and the number of plan offerings in the Demonstration using a differences-in-differences identification strategy. We used matching to create a comparison group of counties that did not receive double bonuses but had similar levels of the preintervention outcomes. Results from the difference-in-differences analysis suggest that the receipt of double bonuses was not associated with an increase in star ratings. In the matched sample, the receipt of double bonuses was associated with a statistically insignificant increase of +0.034 (approximately 1 percent) in the average star rating (p > .10, 95 percent CI: -0.015, 0.083). In contrast, the receipt of double bonuses was associated with an increase in the number of plans offered. In the matched sample, the receipt of double bonuses was associated with an overall increase of +0.814 plans (approximately 5.8 percent) (p < .05, 95 percent CI: 0.078, 1.549). We estimate that the double bonuses increased payments by $3.43 billion over the first 3 years of the Demonstration. At great expense to Medicare, double bonuses in the Medicare Advantage Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration were not associated with improved quality but were associated with more plan offerings.

Low-Income Housing Development, Poverty Concentration, and Neighborhood Inequality

Considerable debate exists about the merits of place-based programs that steer new development, and particularly affordable housing development, into low-income neighborhoods. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in incentives to construct and rehabilitate rental housing across neighborhoods generated by Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program rules, we explore the impacts of subsidized development on local housing construction, poverty concentration, and neighborhood inequality. While a large fraction of rental housing development spurred by the program is offset by a reduction in the number of new unsubsidized units, housing investment under the LIHTC has measurable effects on the distribution of income within and across communities. However, there is little evidence the program contributes meaningfully to poverty concentration or residential segregation.

"Making it Count": Evidence from a Field Study on Assessment Rules, Study Incentives and Student Performance

This paper examines a quasi-experiment in which we encourage student effort by setting various weekly incentives to engage in online tests. Our identification strategy exploits i) weekly variation in incentives to determine their impact on student effort, and ii) controlled cross-group variation in assessment weighting. Assessment weighting strongly encourages quiz participation, without displacing effort over the year. We estimate the return to a quiz at around 0.15 of a standard deviation in exam grade. Effort in our study increases most for students at and below median ability, resulting in a reduction of the grade gap by 8%.

Learning from Peers

We study how peers impact worker productivity growth among salespeople in the cosmetics department of a department store. We first exploit a shift assignment policy that creates exogenous variation in salespersons’ peers each week to identify and quantify sources of worker learning. We find that peer-based learning is more important than learning-by-doing for individuals, and find no evidence of forgetting. Working with high-ability peers substantially increases the long-term productivity growth of new salespeople. We then examine possible mechanisms behind peer-based learning by exploiting the multiple collocated firms in our setting that sell products with different task difficulties, and compensate their sales force using either team-based or individual-based compensation systems. The variation in incentives to compete and cooperate within and across firm boundaries, combined with variation in sales difficulty for different product classes, allows us to suggest two mechanisms behind peer-based learning: observing successful sales techniques of peers and direct teaching. Our paper advocates the importance of learning from one another in the workplace, and suggests that individual peer-based learning is a foundation of both organizational learning curves and knowledge spillovers across firms.

How Does Social Security Claiming Respond to Incentives? Considering Husbands' and Wives' Benefits Separately

A majority of women receive most of their Social Security benefits based upon their husbands' earnings history, but previous research has shown that husbands' benefit claiming is inconsistent with maximizing lifetime benefits for the couple. However, that research assumes husbands choose their claim age based on all Social Security incentives facing the household. I show that husbands' claiming behavior responds to the actuarial incentives built into their own retired worker benefit formula, but not to the incentives built into the spouse and survivor formulas that determine their wives' benefits. This failure to incorporate his spouses' incentives reduces wives' lifetime benefits. Variation in incentives comes from rule changes to the Social Security benefit calculation in addition to the age difference between spouses and the relative strength of the wife's labor force history. A variety of robustness checks looking at segments of the population predicted to be more responsive to incentives provide similar results to the main specification.

How Does Social Security Claiming Respond to Incentives? Considering Husbands' and Wives' Benefits Separately

A majority of women receive most of their Social Security benefits based upon their husbands&amp;amp;#x27; earnings history, but previous research has shown that husbands&amp;amp;#x27; benefit claiming is inconsistent with maximizing lifetime benefits for the couple. However, that research assumes husbands choose their claim age based on all Social Security incentives facing the household. I show that husbands&amp;amp;#x27; claiming behavior responds to the actuarial incentives built into their own retired worker benefit formula, but not to the incentives built into the spouse and survivor formulas that determine their wives&amp;amp;#x27; benefits. This failure to incorporate spouses&amp;amp;#x27; incentives reduces wives&amp;amp;#x27; lifetime benefits. Variation in incentives comes from rule changes to the Social Security benefit calculation in addition to the age difference between spouses and the relative strength of the wife&amp;amp;#x27;s labor force history. A variety of robustness checks looking at segments of the population predicted to be more responsive to incentives provide similar results to the main specification.