Harbaugh, Bill
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The collection highlights some of the research being undertaken by Bill Harbaugh, Associate Professor, UO Economics Department.
A.K.A.
W. T. Harbaugh
William T. Harbaugh
538 PLC
University of Oregon
Economics Department
Eugene, Oregon 97403-1285
email: bill@harbaugh.org
Phone: 541-346-1244
Fax: 541-346-1243
For more information, visit his personal web site at: http://harbaugh.org
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Item Open Access Menstrual Cycle and Performance Feedback Alter Gender Differences in Competitive Choices(University of Oregon, Dept of Economics, 2010-10-28) Wozniak, David; Harbaugh, William; Mayr, Ulrich, 1962-Economic experiments have shown that in mixed gender groups women are more reluctant than men to choose tournaments when given the choice between piece rate and winner-take-all tournament style compensation. These gender difference experiments have all relied on a framework where subjects were not informed of their abilities relative to potential competitors. We replicate these findings with math and word tasks, and then show that feedback about relative performance moves high ability females towards more competitive compensation schemes, moves low ability men towards less competitive schemes such as piece rate and group pay, and removes the average gender difference in compensation choices. We also examine between and within-subjects differences in choices for females across the menstrual cycle. We find women’s relative reluctance to choose tournaments comes mostly from women in the low hormone phase of their menstrual cycle. Women in the high hormone phase are substantially more willing to compete than women in the low phase, though still somewhat less willing to compete than men. There are no significant differences between the choices of any of these groups after they receive relative performance feedback.Item Open Access An Experimental Test of Criminal Behavior Among Juveniles and Young Adults(University of Oregon, Dept of Economics, 2006-08) Visser, Michael Scott, 1976-; Harbaugh, William; Mocan, H. NaciWe report results from economic experiments that provide a direct test of the hypothesis that criminal behavior responds rationally to changes in the possible rewards and in the probability and severity of punishment. The experiments involve decisions that are best described as petty larceny, and are done using high school and college students who can anonymously take real money from each other. We find that decisions about whether and how much to steal are, in general, rational and responsive to the variations in tradeoffs, and sometimes, though not always, to the overall availability of criminal opportunities.Item Open Access Risk Attitudes of Children and Adults : Choices over Small and Large Probability Gains and Losses(2001-11-05) Harbaugh, William; Krause, Kate; Vesterlund, LiseIn this paper we examine how risk attitudes change with age. We present participants from age 5 to 64 with choices between simple gambles and the expected value of the gambles. The gambles are over both gains and losses, and vary in the probability of the non-zero payoff. Surprisingly, we find that many participants are risk seeking when faced with high-probability prospects over gains and risk averse when faced with small-probability prospects. Over losses we find the exact opposite. Children’s choices are consistent with the underweighting of low-probability events and the overweighting of high-probability ones. This tendency diminishes with age, and on average adults appear to use the objective probability when evaluating risky prospects.Item Open Access Trust in Children(University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2002-03-22) Liday, Steven G.; Vesterlund, Lise; Harbaugh, William; Krause, KateIn this paper we study trust/reciprocity behavior in children ages eight to eighteen using an augmented version of Berg et al.â s (1995) trust game. This study is intended to inspect and reveal when certain aspects of trust behavior are formed in individuals. In addition, we examine the affect of certain characteristics in subjects that lead to higher levels of trusting behavior.Item Open Access Demonstrating worker quality through strategic absenteeism(University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2002-06-14) Harbaugh, William; Nouweland, Anne van denDetermining the productivity of individual workers engaged in team production is difficult. Monitoring expenses may be high, or the observable output of the entire team may be some single product. One way to collect information about individual productivity is to observe how total output changes when the composition of the team changes. While some employers may explicitly shift workers from team to team for exactly this reason, the most common reasons for changes in team composition are at least partly voluntary: vacation time and sick days. In this paper, we develop a model of optimal absenteeism by employees which accounts for strategic interactions between employees. We assume the employer uses both observed changes in output and the strategies of the employees to form beliefs about a given worker’s type. We argue that the model we develop is applicable to a variety of workplace situations where signaling models are not, because it allows a worker’s decisions to provide information aboutItem Open Access Bargaining by Children(University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2002-07-20) Liday, Steven G.; Harbaugh, William; Krause, KateWe study the development of bargaining behavior in children age seven through 18, using ultimatum and dictator games. We find that bargaining behavior changes substantially with age and that most of this change appears to be related to changes in preferences for fairness, rather than bargaining ability. Younger children make and accept smaller ultimatum proposals than do older children, Even young children are quite strategic in their behavior, making much smaller dictator than ultimatum proposals. Boys claim to be more aggressive bargainers than girls do, but they are not. Older girls make larger dictator proposals than older boys, but among younger children the proposals differ much more by height than by sex. We argue that the existence of systematic differences in bargaining behavior across age and sex supports the argument that culture is a determinant of economic behavior, and suggests that people acquire this culture during childhood. We argue that the height differences indicate that forces other than culture, in the usual sense of the word, are also important. Publisher InfoItem Open Access Prospect Theory in Choice and Pricing Tasks(University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2002-07-20) Harbaugh, William; Krause, Kate; Vesterlund, LiseThe most distinctive prediction of prospect theory is the fourfold pattern (FFP) of risk attitudes. People are said to be (1) risk-seeking over low-probability gains, (2) risk-averse over low-probability losses, (3) risk-averse over high-probability gains, and (4) risk-seeking over high-probability losses. Using simple gambles over real payoffs, we conduct a direct test of this FFP prediction. We find that when pricing gambles subjects’ risk attitudes are consistent with the FFP. However, when they choose between the gamble and its expected value, their decisions are not distinguishable from random choice and are often the exact opposite of the prediction. These results hold both between and within subjects, and are robust even when we allow the subjects to simultaneously review and change their price and choice decisions.Item Open Access The Carrot or the Stick: Rewards, Punishments, and Cooperation(University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2002-08-20) Andreoni, James; Harbaugh, William; Vesterlund, LiseWe examine rewards and punishments in a simple proposer-responder game. The proposer first makes an offer to split a fixed-sized pie. According to the 2×2 design, the responder is or is not given a costly option of increasing or decreasing the proposer's payoff. We find substantial demands for both punishments and rewards. While rewards alone have little influence on cooperation, punishments have some. When the two are combined the effect on cooperation is dramatic, suggesting that rewards and punishments are complements in producing cooperation. Providing new insights to what motivates these demands is the surprising finding that the demands for rewards depend on the availability of punishments.Item Open Access Valuing Children’s Health and Life: What Does Economic Theory Say About Including Parental and Societal Willingness To Pay?(University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2001-06-01) Harbaugh, WilliamGovernments can and do adopt many policies that will improve the health and reduce the mortality risks of children. Given this, estimates of the value of improvements in children’s health and reductions in their mortality risk are needed so that governments can rationally choose which of the many possible policies to adopt. These estimates should be based on an appropriate measure of value that is based on economic theory. This paper examines what economic theory has to say about what sorts of elements should be counted in that value, and how that value should then be used in decision-making.Item Open Access Economic Experiments That You Can Perform At Home On Your Children(University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2001-06-01) Krause, Kate; Harbaugh, WilliamThis paper describes some simple economic experiments that can be done using children as subjects. We argue that by conducting experiments on children economists can gain insight into the origins of preferences, the development of bargaining behavior and rationality, and into the origins of "irrational" behavior in adults. Most of the experiments are exploratory, and the objective is as much to learn how to conduct economic experiments on children and suggest avenues for further research as to describe specific results. Preliminary results suggest that while children are very different from adults in some ways, such as their rate of time preference, they are very similar in others, such as their bargaining and altruistic behavior. We also find that children can make choices that generally satisfy the usual transitivity test for rationality, and that in some ways they may even be more rational than adults. The paper includes protocols which can be used to replicate the experiments.