IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bri/uobdis/21-738.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Control, Cost, and Confidence:Perseverance and Procrastination in the Face of Failure

Author

Listed:
  • Inga Deimen
  • Julia Wirtz

Abstract

We study effort provision and the development of control beliefs over time: a student is uncertain whether she has control over success through her effort or whether it is determined by her innate ability, which she also does not know. In each period, what she can learn about her control and her ability depends on the level of effort she exerts. We characterize the student’s optimal effort policy in this two-dimensional bandit problem, which may feature repeated switching of the effort level. Moreover, we analyze how control, cost, and confidence impact perseverance and procrastination in the face of failure. Finally, we relate our results to findings in educational psychology and discuss policies to foster perseverance and to lower procrastination.

Suggested Citation

  • Inga Deimen & Julia Wirtz, 2021. "Control, Cost, and Confidence:Perseverance and Procrastination in the Face of Failure," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 21/738, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    • Handle: RePEc:bri:uobdis:21/738
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/efm/media/workingpapers/working_papers/pdffiles/dp21738.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bart H.H. Golsteyn & Hans Grönqvist & Lena Lindahl, 2014. "Adolescent Time Preferences Predict Lifetime Outcomes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(580), pages 739-761, November.
    2. Nikandrova, Arina & Pancs, Romans, 2018. "Dynamic project selection," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), January.
    3. Nicolas Klein & Sven Rady, 2011. "Negatively Correlated Bandits," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(2), pages 693-732.
    4. Godfrey Keller & Sven Rady & Martin Cripps, 2005. "Strategic Experimentation with Exponential Bandits," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(1), pages 39-68, January.
    5. Yeon-Koo Che & Konrad Mierendorff, 2019. "Optimal Dynamic Allocation of Attention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(8), pages 2993-3029, August.
    6. Thomas Piketty, 1995. "Social Mobility and Redistributive Politics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 551-584.
    7. Caliendo, Marco & Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Hennecke, Juliane & Uhlendorff, Arne, 2019. "Locus of control and internal migration," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    8. Marco Caliendo & Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Arne Uhlendorff, 2015. "Locus of Control and Job Search Strategies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(1), pages 88-103, March.
    9. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List & Susanne Neckermann & Sally Sadoff, 2016. "The Behavioralist Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 183-219, November.
    10. Patrick Bolton & Christopher Harris, 1999. "Strategic Experimentation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(2), pages 349-374, March.
    11. Matthew Wiswall & Basit Zafar, 2015. "How Do College Students Respond to Public Information about Earnings?," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(2), pages 117-169.
    12. Margo Coleman & Thomas DeLeire, 2003. "An Economic Model of Locus of Control and the Human Capital Investment Decision," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 38(3).
    13. Rothschild, Michael, 1974. "A two-armed bandit theory of market pricing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 185-202, October.
    14. Todd Stinebrickner & Ralph Stinebrickner, 2012. "Learning about Academic Ability and the College Dropout Decision," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(4), pages 707-748.
    15. James J. Heckman & Jora Stixrud & Sergio Urzua, 2006. "The Effects of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities on Labor Market Outcomes and Social Behavior," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 411-482, July.
    16. Nina Hestermann & Yves Le Yaouanq, 2021. "Experimentation with Self-Serving Attribution Biases," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 198-237, August.
    17. Sule Alan & Seda Ertac, 2018. "Fostering Patience in the Classroom: Results from Randomized Educational Intervention," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(5), pages 1865-1911.
    18. Paul Heidhues & Botond Kőszegi & Philipp Strack, 2018. "Unrealistic Expectations and Misguided Learning," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(4), pages 1159-1214, July.
    19. Robert Jensen, 2010. "The (Perceived) Returns to Education and the Demand for Schooling," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 515-548.
    20. Camargo, Braz, 2007. "Good news and bad news in two-armed bandits," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 558-566, July.
    21. Yona Rubinstein & James J. Heckman, 2001. "The Importance of Noncognitive Skills: Lessons from the GED Testing Program," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 145-149, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aniruddha Ghosh, 2024. "Robust Comparative Statics with Misspecified Bayesian Learning," Papers 2407.17037, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kunz, Johannes S. & Staub, Kevin E., 2020. "Early subjective completion beliefs and the demand for post-secondary education," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 34-55.
    2. Pons Rotger, Gabriel & Rosholm, Michael, 2020. "The Role of Beliefs in Long Sickness Absence: Experimental Evidence from a Psychological Intervention," IZA Discussion Papers 13582, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Klein, Nicolas, 2013. "Strategic learning in teams," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 636-657.
    4. Antoine Marsaudon, 2022. "Do Hospital Stays Modify Locus of Control?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 170(2), pages 257-277, May.
    5. Dietmar Fehr & Yannick Reichlin, 2021. "Status, Control Beliefs, and Risk-Taking," CESifo Working Paper Series 9253, CESifo.
    6. Salamanca, Nicolás & de Grip, Andries & Fouarge, Didier & Montizaan, Raymond, 2020. "Locus of control and investment in risky assets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 548-568.
    7. Xue, Sen & Kidd, Michael P. & Le, Anh.T. & Kirk, Kathy & Martin, Nicholas G., 2020. "The role of locus of control in adulthood outcomes: Evidence from Australian twins," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 566-588.
    8. , & ,, 2010. "Strategic experimentation with Poisson bandits," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 5(2), May.
    9. Mendolia, Silvia & Walker, Ian, 2014. "The effect of personality traits on subject choice and performance in high school: Evidence from an English cohort," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 47-65.
    10. Heidhues, Paul & Rady, Sven & Strack, Philipp, 2015. "Strategic experimentation with private payoffs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 531-551.
    11. Johannes S. Kunz & Kevin E. Staub, 2016. "Subjective Completion Beliefs and the Demand for Post-Secondary Education," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 878, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    12. Sutter, Matthias & Zoller, Claudia & Glätzle-Rützler, Daniela, 2019. "Economic behavior of children and adolescents – A first survey of experimental economics results," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 98-121.
    13. Eva M. Berger & Luke Haywood, 2016. "Locus of Control and Mothers’ Return to Employment," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(4), pages 442-481.
    14. Juliane Hennecke, 2020. "Locus of Control and Female Labor Force Participation," Working Papers 2020-03, Auckland University of Technology, Department of Economics.
    15. Ao, Xiang & Chen, Xuan & Zhao, Zhong, 2022. "Is care by grandparents or parents better for children's non-cognitive skills? Evidence on locus of control from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    16. Islam, Asad & Lee, Wang-Sheng & Nicholas, Aaron, 2021. "The Effects of Chess Instruction on Academic and Non-cognitive Outcomes: Field Experimental Evidence from a Developing Country," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    17. Etienne Dagorn & David Masclet & Thierry Penard, 2022. "The Behavioral Determinants of School Achievement: A Lab in the Field Experiment in Middle School," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) 2022-05, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS.
    18. Marco Caliendo & Juliane Hennecke, 2022. "Drinking is different! Examining the role of locus of control for alcohol consumption," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(5), pages 2785-2815, November.
    19. Marco Angrisani & Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino & Ryan Kendall & Julen Zarate-Pina, 2024. "Non-Cognitive Skills at the Time of COVID-19: An Experiment with Professional Traders and Students," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 14(02), pages 1-37, June.
    20. Alessandro Lizzeri & Eran Shmaya & Leeat Yariv, 2024. "Disentangling Exploration from Exploitation," NBER Working Papers 32424, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bri:uobdis:21/738. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vicky Jackson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sebriuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.