TY - JOUR AB - This study examines the gender gap in competitiveness in an educational setting and tests whether this gap depends on the difficulty of the task at hand. For this purpose, we administered a series of experiments during the final exam of a university course. We confronted three cohorts of undergraduate students with a set of bonus questions and the choice between an absolute and a tournament grading scheme for these questions. To test the moderating impact of task difficulty, we (randomly) varied the difficulty of the questions between treatment groups. We find that, on average, women are significantly less likely to select the tournament scheme. However, the results show that the gender gap in tournament entry is sizable when the questions are relative easy, but much smaller and statistical insignificant when the questions are difficult. AU - Hoyer, Britta AU - van Huizen, Thomas AU - Keijzer, Linda AU - Rezaei, Sarah AU - Rosenkranz, Stephanie AU - Westbrock, Bastian ID - 16273 JF - Labour Economics TI - Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field ER - TY - JOUR AB - We analyze the actual behavior of agents in a matching mechanism, using data from a clearinghouse at the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics at a German university, where a variant of the Boston mechanism is used. We supplement this data with data generated in a survey among the students who participated in the clearinghouse. We find that under the current mechanism over 74% of students act strategically by misrepresenting at least one of their preferences. Nevertheless, not all students are able to improve their outcome by doing so. We show that this is mainly due to the incomplete information of students and naiveté. Sophisticated students actually reach significantly better outcomes than naive students. Thus, we find evidence that naive students are exploited by sophisticated students in an incomplete information setting. AU - Hoyer, Britta AU - Stroh-Maraun, Nadja ID - 16334 JF - Games and Economic Behavior TI - Matching Strategies of Heterogeneous Agents under Incomplete Information in a University Clearinghouse VL - 121 ER - TY - JOUR AU - Schmitz, Hendrik AU - Stroka‐Wetsch, Magdalena A. ID - 30234 IS - 7 JF - Health Economics KW - Health Policy SN - 1057-9230 TI - Determinants of nursing home choice: Does reported quality matter? VL - 29 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Much work on innovation strategy assumes or theorizes that competition in innovation elicits duplication of research and that disclosure decreases such duplication. We validate this empirically using the American Inventors Protection Act (AIPA), three complementary identification strategies, and a new measure of blocked future patent applications. We show that AIPA—intended to reduce duplication, through default disclosure of patent applications 18 months after filing—reduced duplication in the U.S. and European patent systems. The blocking measure provides a clear and micro measure of technological competition that can be aggregated to facilitate the empirical investigation of innovation, firm strategy, and the positive and negative externalities of patenting. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy. AU - Lück, Sonja AU - Balsmeier, Benjamin AU - Seliger, Florian AU - Fleming, Lee ID - 31802 IS - 6 JF - Management Science KW - Management Science and Operations Research KW - Strategy and Management SN - 0025-1909 TI - Early Disclosure of Invention and Reduced Duplication: An Empirical Test VL - 66 ER - TY - JOUR AU - Haake, Claus-Jochen AU - Trockel, Walter ID - 34115 IS - 1-2 JF - Homo Oeconomicus KW - Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering KW - Environmental Engineering SN - 0943-0180 TI - Introduction to the Special Issue “Bargaining” VL - 37 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Many countries have opened their health care markets to private for-profit providers, aiming to promote quality and choice for patients. The prices are regulated and providers compete in location and quality. We show that whereas opening a public hospital market typically raises quality, the private provider strategically locates towards the corner of the market to avoid costly quality competition. Social welfare depends on the size of the regulator's budget and on the altruism of the public provider. If the budget is large, high quality results and welfare is highest in a duopoly whenever entry is optimal. If the budget is small, quality levels in a duopoly mirror the quality level in a monopoly. It can be optimal for the regulator not to use the full budget. AU - Hehenkamp, Burkhard AU - Kaarbøe, Odvar M. ID - 17350 JF - Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization TI - Location Choice and Quality Competition in Mixed Hospital Markets VL - 177 ER - TY - JOUR AU - Gries, Thomas AU - Redlin, Margarete ID - 17086 JF - International Economics and Economic Policy SN - 1612-4804 TI - Trade and economic development: global causality and development- and openness-related heterogeneity VL - 17 ER - TY - JOUR AU - Gries, Thomas AU - Jungblut, Stefan AU - Krieger, Tim AU - Meyer, Henning ID - 2808 IS - 2 JF - German Economic Review TI - Economic Retirement Age and Lifelong Learning - a theoretical model with heterogeneous labor and biased technical change VL - 20 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We investigate the degree of price competition among telecommunication firms. Underlying a Bertrand model of price competition, we empirically model pricing behaviour in an oligopoly. We analyse panel data of individual pricing information of mobile phone contracts offered between 2011 and 2017. We provide empirical evidence that price differences as well as reputational effects serve as a signal to buyers and significantly affect market demand. Additionally, we find that brands lead to an increase in demand and thus are able to generate spillover effects even after price increase. AU - Kaimann, Daniel AU - Hoyer, Britta ID - 1139 IS - 1 JF - Applied Economics Letters TI - Price competition and the Bertrand model: The paradox of the German mobile discount market VL - 26 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Social psychology studies the "common enemy effect", the phenomenon that members of a group work together when they face an opponent, although they otherwise have little in common. An interesting scenario is the formation of an information network where group members individually sponsor costly links. Suppose that ceteris paribus, an outsider appears who aims to disrupt the information flow within the network by deleting some of the links. The question is how the group responds to this common enemy. We address this question for the homogeneous connections model of strategic network formation, with two-way flow of information and without information decay. For sufficiently low linkage costs, the external threat can lead to a more connected network, a positive common enemy effect. For very high but not prohibitively high linkage costs, the equilibrium network can be minimally connected and efficient in the absence of the external threat whereas it is always empty and ineffi cient in the presence of the external threat, a negative common enemy effect. For intermediate linkage costs, both connected networks and the empty network are Nash for certain cost ranges. AU - Hoyer, Britta AU - Haller, Hans ID - 2256 JF - Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization TI - The Common Enemy Effect under Strategic Network Formation and Disruption VL - 162 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Models on network formation have often been extended to include the potential of network disruption in recent years. Whereas the theoretical research on network formation under the threat of disruption has thus gained prominence, hardly any experimental research exists so far. In this paper, we therefore experimentally study the emergence of networks including the aspect of a known external threat by relating theoretical predictions by Dzuibiński and Goyal (2013) to actual observed behaviour. We deal with the question if subjects in the role of a strategic Designer are able to form safe networks for least costs while facing a strategic Adversary who is going to attack their networks. Varying the costs for protecting nodes, we designed and tested two treatments with different predictions for the equilibrium network and investigated whether one of the least cost equilibrium networks was more likely to be reached. Furthermore, the influence of the subjects’ farsightedness on their decision-making process was elicited and analysed. We find that while subjects are able to build safe networks in both treatments, equilibrium networks are only built in one of the two treatments. In the other treatment, predominantly safe networks are built but they are not for least costs. Additionally, we find that farsightedness –as measured in our experiment– has no influence on whether subjects are able to build safe or least cost equilibrium networks. Two robustness settings with a reduced external threat or more liberties to modify the initial networks qualitatively confirm our results. Overall, in this experiment observed behaviour is only partially in line with the theoretical predictions by Dzuibiński and Goyal (2013). AU - Endres, Angelika Elfriede AU - Recker, Sonja AU - Mir Djawadi, Behnud AU - Hoyer, Britta ID - 80 JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization TI - Network Formation and Disruption - An Experiment: Are equilibrium networks too complex? VL - 157 ER - TY - JOUR AU - Fritz, Marlon AU - Gries, Thomas AU - Feng, Yuanhua ID - 9920 JF - Economics Letters SN - 0165-1765 TI - Secular stagnation? Is there statistical evidence of an unprecedented, systematic decline in growth? VL - 181 ER - TY - JOUR AU - Gries, Thomas AU - Fritz, Marlon AU - Yuanhua, Feng ID - 6734 IS - 1 JF - Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics TI - Growth Trends and Systematic Patterns of Boom and Busts –Testing 200 Years of Business Cycle Dynamics VL - 81 ER - TY - JOUR AU - Gries, Thomas ID - 10090 JF - The American Economist SN - 0569-4345 TI - A New Theory of Demand-Restricted Growth: The Basic Idea ER - TY - JOUR AU - Bünnings, Christian AU - Schmitz, Hendrik AU - Tauchmann, Harald AU - Ziebarth, Nicolas R. ID - 15075 IS - 2 JF - Journal of Risk and Insurance SN - 0022-4367 TI - The Role of Prices Relative to Supplemental Benefits and Service Quality in Health Plan Choice VL - 86 ER - TY - JOUR AU - Gries, Thomas AU - Redlin, Margarete ID - 2727 IS - 3 JF - Defence and Peace Economics SN - 1024-2694 TI - Pirates – The Young and the Jobless: The Effect of Youth Bulges and Youth Labor Market Integration on Maritime Piracy VL - 30 ER - TY - JOUR AU - Gries, Thomas AU - Grundmann, Rainer ID - 2814 IS - 3 JF - Journal of International Development TI - Fertility and Modernization: The Role of Urbanization in Developing Countries VL - 30 ER - TY - JOUR AB - In our model two divisions negotiate over type-dependent contracts to determine an intrafirm transfer price for an intermediate product. Since the upstream division's (seller's) costs and downstream division's (buyer's) revenues are supposed to be private information, we formally consider cooperative bargaining problems under incomplete information. This means that the two divisions consider allocations of expected utility generated by mechanisms that satisfy (interim) individual rationality, incentive compatibility and/or ex post efficiency. Assuming two possible types for buyer and seller each, we first establish that the bargaining problem is regular, regardless whether or not incentive and/or efficiency constraints are imposed. This allows us to apply the generalized Nash bargaining solution to determine fair transfer payments and transfer quantities. In particular, the generalized Nash bargaining solution tries to balance divisional profits, while incentive constraints are still in place. In that sense a fair profit division is generated. Furthermore, by means of illustrative examples we derive general properties of this solution for the transfer pricing problem and compare the model developed here with the models existing in the literature. We demonstrate that there is a tradeoff between ex post efficiency and fairness. AU - Haake, Claus-Jochen AU - Recker, Sonja ID - 4564 IS - 6 JF - Group Decision and Negotiation TI - The Generalized Nash Bargaining Solution for Transfer Price Negotiations under Incomplete Information VL - 27 ER - TY - JOUR AU - Hoyer, Britta AU - Rosenkranz, Stephanie ID - 4982 IS - 4 JF - Games TI - Determinants of Equilibrium Selection in Network Formation - An Experiment VL - 9 ER - TY - JOUR AB - In Internet transactions, customers and service providers often interact once and anonymously. To prevent deceptive behavior a reputation system is particularly important to reduce information asymmetries about the quality of the offered product or service. In this study we examine the effectiveness of a reputation system to reduce information asymmetries when customers may make mistakes in judging the provided service quality. In our model, a service provider makes strategic quality choices and short-lived customers are asked to evaluate the observed quality by providing ratings to a reputation system. The customer is not able to always evaluate the service quality correctly and possibly submits an erroneous rating according to a predefined probability. Considering reputation profiles of the last three sales, within the theoretical model we derive that the service provider’s dichotomous quality decisions are independent of the reputation profile and depend only on the probabilities of receiving positive and negative ratings when providing low or high quality. Thus, a service provider optimally either maintains a good reputation or completely refrains from any reputation building process. However, when mapping our theoretical model to an experimental design we find that a significant share of subjects in the role of the service provider deviates from optimal behavior and chooses actions which are conditional on the current reputation profile. With respect to these individual quality choices we see that subjects use milking strategies which means that they exploit a good reputation. In particular, if the sales price is high, low quality is delivered until the price drops below a certain threshold, and then high quality is chosen until the price increases again. AU - Mir Djawadi, Behnud AU - Fahr, Rene AU - Haake, Claus-Jochen AU - Recker, Sonja ID - 5330 IS - 11 JF - PLoS ONE TI - Maintaining vs. Milking Good Reputation when Customer Feedback is Inaccurate VL - 13 ER -