Cooperation or competition? A field experiment on non-monetary learning incentives

Authors

REGGIANI Tommaso BIGONI Maria FORT Margherita NARDOTTO Mattia

Year of publication 2015
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Economics and Administration

Citation
Web https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bejeap.2015.15.issue-4/bejeap-2014-0109/bejeap-2014-0109.xml?format=INT
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2014-0109
Field Economy
Keywords competition - cooperation - education - experimental economics - gender differences - incentives
Attached files
Description We assess the effect of two antithetic non-monetary incentive schemes based on grading rules on students’ effort, using experimental data. We randomly assigned students to a tournament scheme that fosters competition between paired up students, a cooperative scheme that promotes information sharing and collaboration between students and a baseline treatment in which students can neither compete nor cooperate. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that competition induces higher effort with respect to cooperation, whereas cooperation does not increase effort with respect to the baseline treatment. Nonetheless, we find a strong gender effect since this result holds only for men while women do not react to this type of non-monetary incentives.

You are running an old browser version. We recommend updating your browser to its latest version.