QuBE Working Papers

2014

• #028
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  Does success breed success? A quasi-experiment on strategic momentum in dynamic contests

  Romain Gauriot and Lionel Page

  We investigate whether professional agents react to changes of incentives during dynamic contests as predicted by contest theory. Using a large data set of point by point ball tracking data from tennis matches over the period 2005-2009, we exploit the randomised variation in point results that occurs when balls bounce very close from the court's line to estimate the causal effect of winning a point on the chance to win the next point. In line with predictions from contest theory, we find evidence of a substantial momentum effect for male players. We do not find any significant effect for female players, suggesting the possible existence of gender differences in how agents react to incentives in contests.

• #027
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  JEL-Codes:

  C92, D72, H41

  Keywords:

  Global Public Goods, Delegation, Cooperation, Experiment

  Providing global public goods: Electoral delegation and cooperation

  Martin G. Kocher, Fanagfang Tan and Jing Yu

  This paper experimentally examines the effect of electoral delegation on providing global public goods shared by several groups. Each group elects a delegate who can freely decide on each group member's contribution (including the contribution of herself) to the global public good. Our results show that people mostly vote for delegates who assign equal contributions for every group member. However, in contrast to standard theoretical predictions, unequal contributions across groups drive cooperation down over time, and it decreases efficiency by almost 50% compared to the benchmark. This pattern is not driven by delegates trying to exploit their fellow group members, as indicated by the theory - quite to the opposite, other-regarding preferences and a re-election incentives guarantee that delegates assign equal contributions for all group members. Since the source of the resulting inefficiency is the polycentric nature of global public goods provision together with other-regarding preferences, we use the term P-inefficiency to describe our finding.

• #026
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  JEL-Codes:

  I24, I25, I28

  Keywords:

  Education, Incentives, Achievement, Indigenous, Program Evaluation, Policy

  Impact Evaluation of an Incentive Program on Educational Achievement of Indigenous Students

  Uwe DUlleck, Juliana Silva-Goncalves and Benno Torgler

  This paper reports on an evaluation of the Fogs Artie program, designed to improve educational outcomes of Australian Indigenous students. In 2012, all Indigenous students enrolled in 21 high schools in Queensland were offered in-kind incentives conditional on their achievement of a specific target for academic grades, behaviour and attendance, coupled with information sessions on the importance of educational achievement. Using a differences-in-differences strategy, we find that the program improved behavioural and academic grades and reduced the number of unexplained absences for female students, but not for male students. In contrast, the program improved scores on a standardized national assessment test for male students. Moreover, we find that the program is only effective for students belonging to intact families.
  

• #025
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  JEL-Codes:

  H26, B40, B52, C63, D03, Z19

  Keywords:

  tax compliance, tax morale, tax evasion, biology, genetics, neurobiology, demography, human drives, agent-based modelling

  Can Tax Compliance Research Profit from Biology?

  Benno Torgler

  Historically, tax compliance has been a highly interdisciplinary avenue of research to which economics, psychology, law, sociology, history, political science, and accountancy have made valuable contributions. It is less well understood, however, whether we can glean useful insights into tax compliance by moving beyond the social sciences. In particular, the literature pays little attention to the relevance of biology. This paper attempts to remedy this shortcoming by examining the potential opportunities and limitations of introducing biological concepts into tax compliance research.