Discussion Paper No. 530
April 21, 2025
Pre-Registration and Pre-Analysis Plans in Experimental Economics
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Abstract:
The open science movement has gained significant momentum over the past decade, with pre-registration and the use of pre-analysis plans being central to ongoing debates. Combining observational evidence on trends in adoption with survey data from 519 researchers, this study examines the adoption of pre-registration (potentially but not necessarily including pre-analysis plans) in experimental economics. Pooling statistics from 19 leading journals published between 2017 and 2023, we observe that the number of papers containing a pre-registration grew from seven per year to 190 per year. Our findings indicate that pre-registration has now become mainstream in experimental economics, with two-thirds of respondents expressing favorable views and 86% having pre-registered at least one study. However, opinions are divided on the scope and comprehensiveness of pre-registration, highlighting the need for clearer guidelines. Researchers assign a credibility premium to pre-registered tests, although the exact channels remain to be understood. Our results suggest growing support for open science practices among experimental economists, with demand for professional associations to guide researchers and reviewers on best practices for pre-registration and other open science initiatives.
Keywords:
pre-registration; pre-analysis plans; experimental economics; open science;
JEL-Classification:
A14; C12; C18; C80; C90; I23;
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Discussion Paper No. 529
April 10, 2025
Correcting Consumer Misperceptions about CO2 emissions
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Abstract:
Policy makers frequently champion information provision about carbon impact on the premise that consumers are willing to mitigate their emissions but are poorly informed about how to do so. We empirically test this argument and reject it. We collect an extensive new dataset and find both large misperceptions of the carbon impact of different consumption behaviors and clear preferences for mitigation. Yet, in two separate experiments, we show that correcting beliefs has no effect on consumption in large representative samples. Our null results are well-powered and informative, as we target information for maximal impact. These results call into question the potential of correcting carbon footprint misperceptions as a tool to fight climate change.
Keywords:
climate change; carbon emissions; information provision; consumer behavior;
JEL-Classification:
C81; C93; D84; Q54;
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Discussion Paper No. 528
March 8, 2025
Personalized Reminders: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Voluntary Retirement Savings in Colombia
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A large share of the global workforce lacks access to employer-sponsored retire- ment plans. In Colombia, where labor informality is high, the government introduced the Beneficios Económicos Periódicos (BEPS) program to promote voluntary retirement savings. However, many enrollees fail to contribute regularly. We conduct a randomized controlled trial with 2,819 BEPS users, assigning them to different planning and monthly reminder treatments, where reminders are tailored in their timing. We find that personalized reminders significantly increase both the frequency and amount of savings, with individuals who recognize their forgetfulness more likely to demand reminders. Our findings highlight the role of reminders tailored to individuals’ preferred timing in sustaining engagement in voluntary savings programs.
Keywords:
retirement savings; personalized reminders; limited attention; financial inclusion;
JEL-Classification:
D91; G41; O16;
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Discussion Paper No. 527
February 14, 2025
The Evolution of Child-Related Gender Inequality in Germany and The Role of Family Policies, 1960-2018
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Using German administrative data from the 1960s onward, this paper (i) examines the long-term evolution of child-related gender inequality in earnings and (ii) assesses the impact of family policies on this inequality. Our first (methodological) contribution is a decomposition approach that separates changes in child-related inequality into three components: the share of mothers, child penalties, and potential earnings of mothers (absent children). Our second contribution is a comprehensive analysis of child-related gender inequality in Germany. We derive three sets of findings. First, child penalties (i.e., the share of potential earnings mothers lose due to children) have increased strongly over the last decades. Mothers who had their first child in the 1960s faced much smaller penalties than those who gave birth in the 2000s. Second, the fraction of overall gender inequality in earnings attributed to children rose from 14% to 64% over our sample period. We show that this trend resulted not only from growing child penalties but also from rising potential earnings of mothers. Intuitively, in later decades, mothers had more income to lose from child-related career breaks. Third, we show that parental leave expansions between 1979 and 1992 amplified child penalties and explain nearly a third of the increase in child-related gender inequality. By contrast, a parental benefit reform in 2007 mitigated further increases.
Keywords:
child penalties; family policy; gender earnings gap;
JEL-Classification:
H31; J13; J22;
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Discussion Paper No. 526
Geoeconomic Fragmentation and the Role of Non-Aligned Countries
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Abstract:
We analyze how non-aligned countries affect welfare outcomes in scenarios of global trade fragmentation. Using a quantitative trade model covering 141 countries and 65 economic sectors, we simulate different scenarios of geoeconomic fragmentation. We find that major non-aligned countries benefit from their neutral position, with welfare gains of up to 0.7%. Their manufacturing sectors particularly benefit under incomplete fragmentation, experiencing value added gains of 2.5%, while agriculture and services face modest declines. These gains turn into significant losses if they join either the Western or Eastern trade bloc. Moreover, world welfare losses increase from -1.9% under incomplete fragmentation to -2.7% when non-aligned countries join the West and to -3.7% when they join the East. Our results highlight the strategic importance of non-aligned countries in mitigating the negative effects of global trade fragmentation.
Keywords:
trade policy; gains from trade; global value chains; quantitative trade models; general equilibrium;
JEL-Classification:
F11; F13; F15; F17; F51;
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Discussion Paper No. 525
January 29, 2025
Informative Certification: Screening vs. Acquisition
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Abstract:
We study monopolistic certification in a buyer-seller relationship, explicitly distinguishing between its role as a device for screening versus acquisition. As a screening device, certification discloses soft information about a seller's private information. As an acquistion device, certification discloses hard information about the good's quality. Despite being costless, we show that, optimally, a monopolistic certifier provides non-maximal information-acquisition, while offering maximal screening. Thus, monopolistic certification exhibits no economic distortions as a screening device, resolving all private information, but provides too little hard information as an acquisition device. While feasible and costless, full information acquisition is suboptimal as it requires excessive information rents. Consequently, market inefficiencies remain due to market uncertainty but not due to private information.
Keywords:
certification; disclosure; screening; information acquisition; monopolistic distortions;
JEL-Classification:
D82;
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Discussion Paper No. 524
Finding a Good Deal: Stable Prices, Costly Search, and the Effect of Entry
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We study markets in which potential buyers engage in costly search to find a good deal. Our novel solution concept for prices builds upon the idea that any movement in a firm's price is followed by an opportunity for its competitors to respond with special offers. This mechanism selects the highest prices such that no firm wishes to undercut a competitor. We identify a distinctive closed-form pattern of disperse prices that uniquely satisfy our pricing solution, and pair that price profile with optimal fixed-sample search. In a stable equilibrium with active search, the intensity of search and consumer surplus are lower and industry profit is higher with more competitors. In a concentrated oligopoly, complete search in equilibrium can eliminate industry profit.
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Discussion Paper No. 523
January 23, 2025
Stable Price Dispersion
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We study the pricing of homogeneous products sold to customers who consider different sets of suppliers. We seek prices that are stable in the sense that no firm wishes to undercut any rival or to raise its price when rivals have a subsequent opportunity to undercut it. We identify stable and dispersed prices that emerge from both collective choice and non-cooperative pricing games, and derive predictions for prices across several price-consideration specifications. We show how the implications for firms and customers compare to those generated by conventional approaches.
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JEL-Classification:
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Discussion Paper No. 522
Measuring Quality of Life under Spatial Frictions
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Abstract:
Using a quantitative spatial model as a data-generating process, we explore how spatial frictions affect the measurement of quality of life. We find that under a canonical parameterization, mobility frictions—generated by idiosyncratic tastes and local ties—dominate trade frictions—generated by trade costs and non-tradable services—as a source of measurement error in the Rosen-Roback framework. This non-classical measurement error leads to a downward bias in es-timates of the urban quality-of-life premium. Our application to Germany reveals that accounting for spatial frictions results in larger quality-of-life differences, different quality-of-life rankings, and an urban quality-of-life premium that exceeds the urban wage premium.
Keywords:
housing; spatial frictions; rents; prices; productivity; quality of life; spatial equilibrium; wages;
JEL-Classification:
J200; J300; R200; R300; R500;
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Discussion Paper No. 521
January 15, 2025
Climbing the Ivory Tower: How Socio-Economic Background Shapes Academia
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We explore how socio-economic background shapes academia, collecting the largest dataset of U.S. academics’ backgrounds and research output. Individuals from poorer backgrounds have been severely underrepresented for seven decades, especially in humanities and elite universities. Father’s occupation predicts professors’ discipline choice and, thus, the direction of research. While we find no differences in the average number of publications, academics from poorer backgrounds are both more likely to not publish and to have outstanding publication records. Academics from poorer backgrounds introduce more novel scientific concepts, but are less likely to receive recognition, as measured by citations, Nobel Prize nominations, and awards.
Keywords:
academics; socio-economic background; science; u.s. census;
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