IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/ucsbec/qt210035w2.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cooperation and Competition in Intergenerational Experiments in

Author

Listed:
  • Charness, Gary B
  • VILLEVAL, MARIE-CLAIRE

Abstract

There is economic pressure towards the postponement of the retirement age, but employers are still reluctant to employ older workers. We investigate the comparative behavior of juniors and seniors in experiments conducted both onsite with the employees of two large firms and in a conventional aboratory environment with students and retirees. We show that seniors are no more risk averse than juniors and are typically more cooperative; both juniors and working seniors respond strongly to competition. The implication is that it may be beneficial to define additional incentives near the end of the career to motivate and retain older workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Charness, Gary B & VILLEVAL, MARIE-CLAIRE, 2008. "Cooperation and Competition in Intergenerational Experiments in," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt210035w2, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsbec:qt210035w2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/210035w2.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    2. Jan Potters & Martin Sefton & Lise Vesterlund, 2007. "Leading-by-example and signaling in voluntary contribution games: an experimental study," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 33(1), pages 169-182, October.
    3. Emrah Arbak & Marie Claire Villeval, 2006. "Endogenous Leadership Selection and Influence," Post-Print halshs-00175479, HAL.
    4. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher & Bernhard von Rosenbladt & J�rgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, "undated". "A Nation-Wide Laboratory: Examining trust and trustworthiness by integrating behavioral experiments into representative surveys," IEW - Working Papers 141, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    5. Riach, Peter A. & Rich, Judy, 2006. "An Experimental Investigation of Age Discrimination in the French Labour Market," IZA Discussion Papers 2522, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Simon Gachter & Ernst Fehr, 2000. "Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 980-994, September.
    7. Barton H. Hamilton & Jack A. Nickerson & Hideo Owan, 2003. "Team Incentives and Worker Heterogeneity: An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Teams on Productivity and Participation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 465-497, June.
    8. Christian Grund & Niels Westergaard‐Nielsen, 2008. "Age structure of the workforce and firm performance," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 29(5), pages 410-422, August.
    9. Sutter, Matthias & Kocher, Martin G., 2007. "Trust and trustworthiness across different age groups," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 364-382, May.
    10. Bellemare, Charles & Kroger, Sabine, 2007. "On representative social capital," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 183-202, January.
    11. Glenn W. Harrison & John A. List, 2004. "Field Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1009-1055, December.
    12. Joanna N. Lahey, 2008. "Age, Women, and Hiring: An Experimental Study," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(1).
    13. Potters, J.J.M. & Sefton, M. & Vesterlund, L., 2007. "Leading-by-example and signaling in voluntary contribution games : An experimental study," Other publications TiSEM 1ea4e6c8-3071-46d8-a29f-0, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    14. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 2008. "Differences in the Economic Decisions of Men and Women: Experimental Evidence," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, in: Charles R. Plott & Vernon L. Smith (ed.), Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 57, pages 509-519, Elsevier.
    15. Holm, Hakan & Nystedt, Paul, 2005. "Intra-generational trust--a semi-experimental study of trust among different generations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 403-419, November.
    16. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Gary Charness & Uri Gneezy, 2010. "Portfolio Choice And Risk Attitudes: An Experiment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 133-146, January.
    18. Martin Kilduff & Reinhard Angelmar & Ajay Mehra, 2000. "Top Management-Team Diversity and Firm Performance: Examining the Role of Cognitions," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(1), pages 21-34, February.
    19. Sabater-Grande, Gerardo & Georgantzis, Nikolaos, 2002. "Accounting for risk aversion in repeated prisoners' dilemma games: an experimental test," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 37-50, 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. Giacomo Degli Antoni, 2017. "Workers’ Propensity to Make a Monetary Sacrifice in Favour of Colleagues or People from the General Population: A Comparison based on an Artefactual Field Experiment," Journal of Entrepreneurial and Organizational Diversity, European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises, vol. 6(2), pages 2-19.
    2. Peter Kuhn & Kailing Shen, 2009. "Employers' Preferences for Gender, Age, Height and Beauty: Direct Evidence," NBER Working Papers 15564, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Gary Charness & Marie-Claire Villeval, 2009. "Cooperation and Competition in Intergenerational Experiments in the Field and the Laboratory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 956-978, June.
    2. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    3. Kocher, Martin G. & Martinsson, Peter & Matzat, Dominik & Wollbrant, Conny, 2015. "The role of beliefs, trust, and risk in contributions to a public good," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 236-244.
    4. Roi Zultan & Eva-Maria Steiger, 2011. "See No Evil: Information Chains and Reciprocity in Teams," Working Papers 1108, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    5. Matteo M. Galizzi & Daniel Navarro-Martinez, 2019. "On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 976-1002, March.
    6. Martin G. Kocher, 2015. "How Trust in Social Dilemmas Evolves with Age," CESifo Working Paper Series 5447, CESifo.
    7. Håkan J. Holm & Paul Nystedt, 2010. "Collective Trust Behavior," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 112(1), pages 25-53, March.
    8. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    9. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    10. J. Atsu Amegashie, 2016. "Public Goods, Signaling, and Norms of Conscientious Leadership," CESifo Working Paper Series 6247, CESifo.
    11. Gächter, Simon & Herrmann, Benedikt, 2011. "The limits of self-governance when cooperators get punished: Experimental evidence from urban and rural Russia," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 193-210, February.
    12. Bruttel, Lisa & Fischbacher, Urs, 2013. "Taking the initiative. What characterizes leaders?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 147-168.
    13. Karakostas, Alexandros & Kocher, Martin G. & Matzat, Dominik & Rau, Holger A. & Riewe, Gerhard, 2023. "The team allocator game: Allocation power in public goods games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 73-87.
    14. Centorrino, Samuele & Concina, Laura, 2013. "A Competitive Approach to Leadership in Public Good Games," LERNA Working Papers 13.02.389, LERNA, University of Toulouse.
    15. Jordi Brandts & David J. Cooper & Roberto A. Weber, 2015. "Legitimacy, Communication, and Leadership in the Turnaround Game," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(11), pages 2627-2645, November.
    16. Werner Güth & Carsten Schmidt & Matthias Sutter, 2007. "Bargaining outside the lab - a newspaper experiment of a three-person ultimatum game," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(518), pages 449-469, March.
    17. Sutter, Matthias & Kocher, Martin G., 2007. "Trust and trustworthiness across different age groups," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 364-382, May.
    18. Bigoni, Maria & Camera, Gabriele & Casari, Marco, 2013. "Strategies of cooperation and punishment among students and clerical workers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 172-182.
    19. Gächter, Simon & Nosenzo, Daniele & Renner, Elke & Sefton, Martin, 2008. "Who Makes a Good Leader? Social Preferences and Leading-by-Example," IZA Discussion Papers 3914, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Croson, Rachel & Gächter, Simon, 2010. "The science of experimental economics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 122-131, January.

    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:cdl:ucsbec:qt210035w2. 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: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educsus.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.