Discussion Paper No. 334
November 30, 2022
Aversion to Hiring Algorithms: Transparency, Gender Profiling, and Self-Confidence
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We run an online experiment to study the origins of algorithm aversion. Participants are either in the role of workers or of managers. Workers perform three real-effort tasks: task 1, task 2, and the job task which is a combination of tasks 1 and 2. They choose whether the hiring decision between themselves and another worker is made either by a participant in the role of a manager or by an algorithm. In a second set of experiments, managers choose whether they want to delegate their hiring decisions to the algorithm. In the baseline treatments, we observe that workers choose the manager more often than the algorithm, and managers also prefer to make the hiring decisions themselves rather than delegate them to the algorithm. When the algorithm does not use workers' gender to predict their job task performance and workers know this, they choose the algorithm more often. Providing details on how the algorithm works does not increase the preference for the algorithm, neither for workers nor for managers. Providing feedback to managers about their performance in hiring the best workers increases their preference for the algorithm, as managers are, on average, overconfident.
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Discussion Paper No. 311
January 18, 2022
Income Contingency and the Electorate’s Support for Tuition
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We show that the electorate’s preferences for using tuition to finance higher education strongly depend on the design of the payment scheme. In representative surveys of the German electorate (N>18,000), experimentally replacing regular upfront by deferred income-contingent payments increases public support for tuition by 18 percentage points. The treatment turns a plurality opposed to tuition into a strong majority of 62 percent in favor. Additional experiments reveal that the treatment effect similarly shows when framed as loan repayments, when answers carry political consequences, and in a survey of adolescents. Reduced fairness concerns and improved student situations act as strong mediators.
Keywords:
tuition; higher education finance; income-contingent loans; voting;
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Discussion Paper No. 309
January 3, 2022
Can Schools Change Religious Attitudes? Evidence from German State Reforms of Compulsory Religious Education
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We study whether compulsory religious education in schools affects students’ religiosity as adults. We exploit the staggered termination of compulsory religious education across German states in models with state and cohort fixed effects. Using three different datasets, we find that abolishing compulsory religious education significantly reduced religiosity of affected students in adulthood. It also reduced the religious actions of personal prayer, church-going, and church membership. Beyond religious attitudes, the reform led to more equalized gender roles, fewer marriages and children, and higher labor-market participation and earnings. The reform did not affect ethical and political values or non-religious school outcomes.
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religious education; religiosity; school reforms;
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Discussion Paper No. 307
December 22, 2021
Strategy-Proof and Envy-Free Random Assignment
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We study the random assignment of indivisible objects among a set of agents with strict preferences. We show that there exists no mechanism which is unanimous, strategy-proof and envy-free. Weakening the first requirement to q-unanimity – i.e., when every agent ranks a different object at the top, then each agent shall receive his most-preferred object with probability of at least q – we show that a mechanism satisfying strategy-proofness, envy-freeness and ex-post weak non-wastefulness can be q-unanimous only for q ≤ n2 (where n is the number of agents). To demonstrate that this bound is tight, we introduce a new mechanism, Random-Dictatorship-cum-Equal-Division (RDcED), and show that it achieves this maximal bound when all objects are acceptable. In addition, for three agents, RDcED is characterized by the first three properties and ex-post weak efficiency. If objects may be unacceptable, strategy-proofness and envy-freeness are jointly incompatible even with ex-post weak non-wastefulness.
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random assignment; strategy-proofness; envy-freeness; q-unanimity;
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Discussion Paper No. 303
November 29, 2021
Aiding Applicants: Leveling the Playing Field within the Immediate Acceptance Mechanism
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In school choice problems, the widely used manipulable Immediate Acceptance mechanism (IA) disadvantages unsophisticated applicants, but may ex-ante Pareto dominate any strategy-proof alternative. In these cases, it may be preferable to aid applicants within IA, rather than to abandon it. In a laboratory experiment, we first document a substantial gap in strategy choices and outcomes between subjects of higher and lower cognitive ability under IA. We then test whether disclosing information on past applications levels the playing field. The treatment is effective in partially reducing the gap between applicants of above- and below-median cognitive ability and in curbing ability segregation across schools, but may leave the least able applicants further behind.
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laboratory experiment; school choice; immediate acceptance; strategy-proofness; cognitive ability; mechanism design;
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Discussion Paper No. 294
November 15, 2021
Earnings Information and Public Preferences for University Tuition: Evidence from Representative Experiments
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Higher education finance depends on the public’s preferences for charging tuition, which may be partly based on beliefs about the university earnings premium. To test whether public support for tuition depends on earnings information, we devise survey experiments in representative samples of the German electorate (N>15,000). The electorate is divided, with a plurality opposing tuition. Providing information on the university earnings premium raises support for tuition by 7 percentage points, turning the plurality in favor. The opposition-reducing effect persists two weeks after treatment. Information on fiscal costs and unequal access does not affect public preferences. We subject the baseline result to various experimental tests of replicability, robustness, heterogeneity, and consequentiality.
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tuition; higher education; information; earnings premium; public opinion; voting;
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Discussion Paper No. 291
November 10, 2021
The Legacy of Covid-19 in Education
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If school closures and social-distancing experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic impeded children’s skill development, they may leave a lasting legacy in human capital. To understand the pandemic’s effects on school children, this paper combines a review of the emerging international literature with new evidence from German longitudinal time-use surveys. Based on the conceptual framework of an education production function, we cover evidence on child, parent, and school inputs and students’ cognitive and socio-emotional development. The German panel evidence shows that children’s learning time decreased severely during the first school closures, particularly for low-achieving students, and increased only slightly one year later. In a value-added model, learning time increases with daily online class instruction, but not with other school activities. The review shows substantial losses in cognitive skills on achievement tests, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Socio-emotional wellbeing also declined in the short run. Structural models and reduced-form projections suggest that unless remediated, the school closures will persistently reduce skill development, lifetime income, and economic growth and increase inequality.
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Covid-19; school closures; education; students; schools; educational inequality;
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Discussion Paper No. 280
Costly Information Acquisition in Centralized Matching Markets
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Every year during school and college admissions, students and their parents devote considerable time and effort to acquiring costly information about their own preferences. In a market where students are ranked by universities based on exam scores, we explore ways to reduce wasteful information acquisition - that is, to help students avoid acquiring information about their out-of-reach schools or universities - using a market design approach. We find that, both theoretically and experimentally, a sequential serial dictatorship mechanism leads to less wasteful information acquisition and higher student welfare than a direct serial dictatorship mechanism. This is because the sequential mechanism informs students about which universities are willing to admit them, thereby directing their search. Additionally, our experiments show that the sequential mechanism has behavioral advantages because subjects deviate from the optimal search strategy less frequently under the sequential than under the direct mechanism. We also investigate the effects of providing historical cutoff scores under the direct mechanism. We find that the cutoff provision can increase student welfare, especially when the information costs are high, although the effect is weaker than that of a sequential mechanism.
Keywords:
matching market; deferred acceptance; information acquisition; game theory; lab experiment;
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Discussion Paper No. 277
Can Mentoring Alleviate Family Disadvantage in Adolescence? A Field Experiment to Improve Labor-Market Prospects
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We study a mentoring program that aims to improve the labor-market prospects of school-attending adolescents from disadvantaged families by offering them a university-student mentor. Our RCT investigates program effectiveness on three outcome dimensions that are highly predictive of adolescents´ later labor-market success: math grades, patience/social skills, and labor-market orientation. For low-SES adolescents, the one-to-one mentoring increases a combined index of the outcomes by half a standard deviation after one year, with significant increases in each dimension. Part of the treatment effect is mediated by establishing mentors as attachment figures who provide guidance for the future. The mentoring is not effective for higher-SES adolescents. The results show that substituting lacking family support by other adults can help disadvantaged children at adolescent age.
Keywords:
mentoring; disadvantaged youths; adolescence; school performance; patience; social skills; labor-market orientation; field experiment;
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Discussion Paper No. 261
Understanding the Response to High-Stakes Incentives in Primary Education
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This paper studies responses to high-stakes incentives arising from early ability tracking. We use three complementary research designs exploiting differences in school track admission rules at the end of primary school in Germany’s early ability tracking system. Our results show that the need to perform well to qualify for a better track raises students’ math, reading, listening, and orthography skills in grade 4, the final grade before students are sorted into tracks. Evidence from self-reported behavior suggests that these effects are driven by greater study effort but not parental responses. However, we also observe that stronger incentives decrease student well-being and intrinsic motivation to study.
Keywords:
student effort; tracking; incentives;
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