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This dissertation uses varying approaches to examine effects of war on communities and individuals in developing countries, specifically in Liberia, West Africa. The first essay, based on work published jointly with Robert E. Moore in 2012, uses a case study of Saclepea, Liberia, to illustrate the role that an appropriately designed local economic development (LED) plan can play in a rural African community emerging from crisis. This case demonstrates the need for the involvement and cooperation of many parties. Clear understanding of the stage of assistance helps to define the role of each entity. This case confirms that local participation in development efforts is an important factor in the success of these efforts. The second essay compares post-war earnings and educational attainment of former child soldiers, adult soldiers, and non-soldiers in post-war Liberia. The results indicate that the war in Liberia had different effects on soldiers than on non-soldiers, but effects for soldiers do not differ greatly between those who fought as children and those who fought as adults. Lasting effects for former soldiers do not, in sum, seem to be negative. Third, I take an experimental approach to understanding trust and trustworthiness among former child soldiers in Liberia. Liberian subjects’ decisions in the standard investment game indicate that former child soldiers do not differ in trusting behavior from other subjects. Non-soldiers are less trusting than adult soldiers, and child soldiers are less trustworthy than adult soldiers. Among only child soldiers, those who had only witnessed violence are more trustworthy than those who had been victims of violence. Liberians in this experiment tend to trust more than Americans who played the same investment game previously. The final essay examines many instances of the same investment game to explore how violence affects trusting and trustworthy behaviors and how those behaviors affect a country’s level of peacefulness. I find that a macroeconomic peace index can predict trust but not trustworthiness. Trustworthiness does affect peacefulness.

This dissertation consists of three chapters that study social influence and the diffusion of information in decision making contexts with limited observable outcomes. Chapter 1 studies social interactions and female genital mutilation (FGM), a traditional procedure of removing the whole or part of the female genitalia for non-medical reasons. Using survey data from Egypt, this paper attempts to identify effects of peer adoption and medicalization on a household's decision to opt for FGM. We find that households are less likely to adopt if their peers adopt less and (in certain areas) if medicalization is more widely used by their peers. Chapter 2, using a lab experiment, studies how influence of any given agent in a social network is driven by assessments of their reliability by network members based on observations of their past behavior. Agents repeatedly make choices, the optimality of which depends on an unobserved state of the world; they are able to communicate those choices with their social peers; and earn a reward after the last period. We enrich the non-Bayesian DeGroot model by postulating that the extent to which network members are influenced by a peer member depends on the extent of nonconformity, variability and extremeness of their past choices. We find that inferred reliability has an effect as significant as network centrality on social influence; when weighting the views of their peers, individuals are sensitive to their observed behavior, especially for those peers with low centrality. Chapter 3 analyzes the effects of a large-scale randomized intervention which provided incentivized block grants with the aim of improving twelve health and education outcomes. Communities were incentivized by having grants sizes dependent on performance. Our goal is to refine an earlier intention-to-treat evaluation, by examining the intervention's heterogeneous effect on the different subpopulations of households defined by their participation in health information outreach. We find that incentivized grants have a strong effect on immunization rates of children from households participating in outreach activities: as high as a 14.3% increase for children aged six months or less, compared to a maximum average treatment effect of 3.7%.

In this thesis I study how networks are formed and I analyse the strategies that well-connected individuals adopt in public good games on a network. In chapter one I study an artefactual field experiment in rural India which tests whether farmers can create efficient networks in a repeated link formation game, and whether group categorisation increases the frequency of in-group links and reduces network efficiency. I find that the efficiency of the networks formed in the experiment is significantly lower than the efficiency which could be achieved under selfish, rational play. When information about group membership is disclosed, in-group links are chosen more frequently, while the efficiency of network structure is not significantly affected. Using a job-referral network experiment in an urban area of Ethiopia, I investigate in chapter two whether individuals create new links with the least connected players in the network. In a first treatment, competition for job-referrals makes it in the player's interest to link with the least connected partners. In this treatment, links to the least connected players are significantly more likely than links to better connected individuals. In a second treatment, connections only affect the welfare of the new partner. Choosing the least connected player minimises inequality and maximises aggregate efficiency. This may motivate other-regarding players. In this treatment, however, links to least connected partners are not significantly more likely than links to other players. In chapter three I explore the characteristics that individuals value in the people they approach for advice. Using cross-sectional data on cocoa farmers in Ghanaian villages and a matched lottery experiment, I find an association between the difference in the aversion to risk of two farmers and the probability that one farmer is interested in the advice of the other farmer. In chapter four I study a one-shot public good game in rural India between farmers connected by a star network. Contributions by the centre of the star have a larger impact on aggregate payoffs than contributions by the spoke players. I use the strategy method to study whether the centre of the star contributes more than the average of the spokes. In selected sessions, I disclose participants' expectations about the choices of the centre of star. I find that the centre player contributes just as much as the average of the spokes, and that he is influenced by the expectations that other players hold about his decisions.

Les jeux de rôles constituent un outil d'aide à la décision participative et, surtout, à la formulation de problèmes, que l'on voit de plus en plus fréquemment mobilisés. Malheureusement, le sens à donner aux résultats de leur mise en œuvre est ambigu, les possibilités de répétitions étant faibles. Une approche pour en évaluer les performanc es et fournir des règles de construction assurant la pertinence des résultats peut être de contrôler l'effet du contexte sur les solutions obtenues. Le travail montre comment il est possible de décomposer ce contexte par dégradation d'un jeu de rôles (appliqué à un bassin versant d'Afrique du Sud) et recomposition de ses dimensions : illustration des instructions, communication, répétition des périodes et vécu des joueurs, l'impact de diverses modalités de ces dimensions étant testé expérimentalement (au LEEM - Laboratoire d'Economie Expérimentale de Montpellier). Nous évaluons l'effet des deux premières dimensions « illustration » et « communication », en comparant les observations obtenues après variation de leurs différentes modalités avec les résultats du traitement témoin où le contexte est abstrait. Nous montrons que l'ajout d'un contenu narratif aux instructions induit un bruit dans les comportements, d'autant plus fort que le contenu est détaillé. Cependant, un conte nu articulé autour de la problématique de « gestion de l'eau » n'a pas le même impact sur les joueurs (dans nos sessions : des étudiants) qu'un contenu pris en dehors du champ (dans notre protocole : le contexte de l'entreprise). Enfin, nous mettons en évidence également que l'argumentation des choix par les joueurs induit un meilleur apprentissage du jeu, faisant converger les décisions plus rapidement vers l'équilibre constaté dans le traitement témoin. / Role-playing games are decision-making support tools and are used to help stakeholders' “issues wording” in resources management situations. Unfortunately, the results obtained after having run games sessions are ambiguous, as stationary replications of games sessions are difficult to implement. Control of the context influence on outcomes is a good approach to assess games performances and to provide rules that can be followed when building other games. After having simplified a role-playing game (applied in a watershed in South Africa), this study shows how a game context could be decomposed and re-composed according to its main dimensions: illustration of the instructions, communication, periods repetition, and players' experience, the impact of different levels of these dimensions being experimentally tested (at LEEM, “Experimental Economics Lab in Montpellier”). We assess the impact of the two first dimensions: “illustration” and “communic ation”, by comparing the outcomes obtained after having varied their levels with the ones obtained in the referential treatment. We show that addition of contextual elements in instructions produces a noise in behaviours, as much important as context is developed in details. However, “water management” context does not impact the players' decisions (when involving students in sessions) in the same way than other context chosen in another field (in our protocol: salaries in a firm). Finally, argumentation of their choices by players improve learning outcomes. Convergence of decisions until a referential equilibrium is faster when communication between players is allowed.

x, 133 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Individuals compete against each other in a variety of different settings. In labor markets they compete for promotion; in athletic tournaments they compete for fixed prizes. Important aspects of competitive choices include the probability of success, expected payoffs, the level of ambiguity regarding success, and preferences to compete. I explore the effects of biology and relative performance feedback in regard to these components in three essays. In the first essay I use a unique experiment design to measure ambiguity aversion, which can be modified to also control for risk aversion. A measure of ambiguity aversion has value as individuals in labor markets have ambiguous signals about their probabilities of success in competition. Consequently this measure may be used in future experiment designs to control for heterogeneous preferences for ambiguity and to test whether ambiguity affects behaviors differently than risk. Economic experiments have shown that when given the choice between piece rate and winner-take-all tournament style compensation, women are more reluctant than men to choose tournaments. In the second essay I replicate these findings and then show that giving relative performance feedback moves high ability women towards more competitive compensation schemes, moves low ability men towards less competitive compensation schemes, and removes the gender difference in compensation choices. I then examine differences in choices for women, across the menstrual cycle. I find that women in the low-hormone phase of their cycle are less likely to enter tournaments than women in the high-hormone phase. Men are more likely to choose tournaments than women at either stage. There are no significant selection differences between any of these groups after they receive relative performance feedback. Athletic labor markets provide a unique environment where individuals choose to compete when they have high quality information about their potential competitors. Gender differences for competition have been found to be removed when information about relative abilities is available. In the third essay, to explore the effect of information in a labor market setting, I use a unique data set of approximately 6,000 female and male competitive tennis players during the 2009 season. I focus on whether males and females choose to enter competitive tournaments differently in response to past performance. I find that males continue to compete after performing well in the previous week while females are less likely to compete if they do well. These contrasting behaviors suggest that males and females respond differently to performance feedback. / Committee in charge: William Harbaugh, Chairperson, Economics; Trudy Cameron, Member, Economics; Van Kolpin, Member, Economics; Christopher Minson, Outside Member, Human Physiology

Os jogos de empresas, ambientes laboratoriais caracterizados por interações de múltiplas variáveis, têm sido pouco utilizados para pesquisas em face das críticas a sua validade interna, ou seja, à capacidade de o ambiente bem representar relações de causa e efeito (KEYS; WOLFE, 1990; STAINTON et al, 2010). Ao contrário, são usados com frequência para ensino-aprendizagem (FARIA et al, 2009) e considerados ambientes verossímeis quanto ao contexto organizacional e à capacidade de generalização dos resultados obtidos - validade externa (MICHALISIN et al, 2004; STAINTON et al, 2010). O oposto ocorre nos ambientes laboratoriais adotados no programa de pesquisa da economia experimental, que, ao utilizarem delineamentos simplificados (geralmente com fator único) têm maior reconhecimento para pesquisa, pois permitem o controle da validade interna (ROTH, 2010). Contudo, tais pesquisas são frequentemente criticadas pela baixa validade externa, decorrente da utilização do delineamento simplificado (LEVITT; LIST, 2007b, p. 353; CAMERER, 2011). Buscou-se nesta tese aproximar jogos de empresas e economia experimental e estudar as condições em que os jogos de empresas tornam-se ambientes laboratoriais adequados para pesquisas econômicas. Para cumprir este objetivo a tese foi composta por quatro estudos. O ensaio teórico revisitou os fundamentos dos programas de pesquisa de jogos de empresas e de economia experimental e permitiu delinear três estudos teórico-empíricos, conduzidos com os jogos de empresas. No primeiro, sob o enfoque neoclássico, foi verificado se os preços praticados em monopólio diferiram dos preços de oligopólio. Assim como sinaliza a teoria, os resultados convergiram com os estudos realizados a partir de Smith (1981), evidenciando validade interna. No segundo estudo, conduzido sob o enfoque da organização industrial, foram adotados dois modelos de aferição de poder de mercado e comparados sinal e magnitude dos desvios, ora estimados pela Nova Organização Industrial Empírica (NOIE), ora baseados em dados contábeis conforme o modelo de Estrutura-Conduta-Desempenho (ECD). O resultado foi condizente com os achados de Clay e Troesken (2003), evidenciando validade interna. No terceiro estudo, conduzido sob o enfoque da economia comportamental, foi examinado se o desempenho organizacional teve relação com o nível de confiança das estimativas subjetivas de gestores, como predito por Moore e Healy (2008), o que foi confirmado. Os resultados evidenciaram a adequação dos jogos de empresas nas pesquisas econômicas sobre oligopólio e poder de mercado, na verificação de validade externa, na condução de pesquisas experimentais e não experimentais. Os jogos de empresas, sob condições de validade interna, poderão ser adotados como ambientes laboratoriais por pesquisadores em Administração e Economia para replicar estudos seminais e ampliar a validade externa de hipóteses advindas de delineamentos simplificados. / With laboratory environment characterized by interactions of multiple variables, business games have had limited use in research to be criticized for the internal validity, i.e. the environment\'s capacity to represent relations of cause and effect (KEYS; WOLFE, 1990; STAINTON et al, 2010). Because of this, its use has been predominantly for educational purposes (FARIA et al, 2009). Despite this limitation, the business games have been cited as credible environments in relation to the organizational context, which increases the generalizability of the results (external validity) (MICHALISIN et al, 2004; STAINTON et al, 2010). The opposite occurs with the laboratory environments used in experimental economics, which, when using simplified research designs, usually with unique factor, have had more use in research, mainly through control of internal validity (ROTH, 2010). However, these studies are often criticized by the low external validity, caused by the use of the simplified design (LEVITT; LIST, 2007b, p 353;. CAMERER, 2011). This research, by approaching business games and experimental economics, verify the conditions under which the business games are laboratory environments for economic research and contribute to the limitations of validity in both research programs. Throughout the thesis were developed four studies to fulfill this goal. The review of research programs of business games and experimental economics, theoretical study, allowed us to propose the design of the empirical economic studies with the business games. In the first empirical study, with a focus on neoclassical approach, it was checked if the prices in monopoly differed from oligopoly. As previous studies, the research obtained similar results to previous studies realized since Smith (1981). In the second empirical study, conducted under the research program of industrial organization, sign and magnitude of the deviation of market power measurement model of the New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) were compared to the Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) based on accounting data. The result was consistent with Clay and Troesken (2003). In the third study, conducted under the program of behavioral economics, it was examined if organizational performance was related to the confidence level of subjective estimates of individuals, as predicted by Moore and Healy (2008), which was confirmed. The results showed evidence of the adequacy of the laboratory environment of business games for economic research in areas related to oligopoly and market power, to external validity verification, and realization of experimental and not experimental research. As a conclusion, researchers in Business Administration and Economics can use the business game environment for conducting research to evaluate the external validity of assumptions arising from simplified research designs, and for educational purposes in both areas.

Pour empêcher la surexploitation des ressources naturelles, les décideurs publics peuvent choisir d'attribuer de quotas individuels de prélèvement. Or, dans le cas des prélèvements en eau souterraine pour l'irrigation, la demande en eau des agriculteurs est susceptible de subir des variations interannuelles significatives en fonction des conditions agronomiques, climatiques et économiques annuelles. Nous nous sommes demandé comment concilier le respect de la ressource disponible et le besoin de souplesse des irrigants. Nous étudions pour cela deux instruments de régulation des prélèvements agricoles en nappe qui introduisent de la flexibilité dans un système d'allocations individuelles tout en garantissant le respect du volume total prélevable à l'échelle de l'aquifère. Le premier est un bonus-malus : il repose sur l'imposition d'une pénalité financière aux irrigants qui dépassent leur allocation individuelle (malus), dont la recette est intégralement reversée sous forme de récompense aux irrigants qui ont réalisé des économies (bonus). Le second offre aux irrigants la possibilité de mutualiser leurs allocations en eau au sein d'un contrat qui les rend conjointement responsables du respect de l'allocation totale du groupe. Nous avons procédé à une évaluation ex-ante de ces instruments au travers de deux méthodes : une approche par des ateliers participatifs puis une approche expérimentale. Les résultats montrent que les choix d'irrigation ne sont pas uniquement guidés par la maximisation du profit économique et que la fonction d'utilité des irrigants intègre des paramètres non économiques, en particulier environnementaux, éthiques et sociaux. Ainsi, pour optimiser leur efficacité, les instruments de régulation des prélèvements doivent combiner incitations économiques et sociales, avec un poids respectif à adapter aux conditions économiques et au tissu social local. / In order to prevent overexploitation of natural resources, decision makers have been implementing individual quota-based systems. Yet, in the particular case of groundwater abstraction for irrigation, farmers' demand is likely to vary relevantly from year to year, due to annual agricultural, environmental and economic conditions. In this thesis, we wonder how to reconcile environmental aims with farmers' need for flexibility. We propose two instruments for regulating groundwater withdrawals for irrigation that ensure compliance with the total abstractable volume while introducing flexibility in the quota-based management. The first one relies on penalties applied to farmers who exceed their allocation, which are totally redistributed as financial compensations to farmers who have saved water. The second instrument gives farmers the opportunity of pooling water allocations within a contract that makes them jointly liable for the collective allocation compliance. We evaluate both instruments through a participatory approach followed by an experimental approach. Results show that farmers' irrigation choices are not only driven by profit maximization but that their utility function also depends upon non-economic parameters, such as social and ethic preferences. Thus, in order to strengthen their efficiency, instruments must include both economic and social incentives, respectively weighted as to be adapted to local economic conditions and social tissue.

The objective of this thesis is to improve the understanding of human behavior that goes beyond monetary rewards. In particular, it investigates social influences in individual’s decision making in situations that involve coordination, competition, and deciding for others. Further, it compares how monetary and social outcomes are perceived. The common theme of all studies is uncertainty. The first four essays study individual decisions that have uncertain consequences, be it due to the actions of others or chance. The last essay, in turn, uses the advances in research on decision making under uncertainty to predict behavior in riskless choices. The first essay, Fairness Versus Efficiency: How Procedural Fairness Concerns Affect Coordination, investigates whether preferences for fair rules undermine the efficiency of coordination mechanisms that put some individuals at a disadvantage. The results from a laboratory experiment show that the existence of coordination mechanisms, such as action recommendations, increases efficiency, even if one party is strongly disadvantaged by the mechanism. Further, it is demonstrated that while individuals’ behavior does not depend on the fairness of the coordination mechanism, their beliefs about people’s behavior do. The second essay, Dishonesty and Competition. Evidence from a stiff competition environment, explores whether and how the possibility to behave dishonestly affects the willingness to compete and who the winner is in a competition between similarly skilled individuals. We do not find differences in competition entry between competitions in which dishonesty is possible and in which it is not. However, we find that due to the heterogeneity in propensity to behave dishonestly, around 20% of winners are not the best-performing individuals. This implies that the efficient allocation of resources cannot be ensured in a stiff competition in which behavior is unmonitored. The third essay, Tracing Risky Decision Making for Oneself and Others: The Role of Intuition and Deliberation, explores how individuals make choices under risk for themselves and on behalf of other people. The findings demonstrate that while there are no differences in preferences for taking risks when deciding for oneself  and for others, individuals have greater decision error when choosing for other individuals. The differences in the decision error can be partly attributed to the differences in information processing; individuals employ more deliberative cognitive processing when deciding for themselves than when deciding for others. Conducting more information processing when deciding for others is related to the reduction in decision error. The fourth essay, The Effect of Decision Fatigue on Surgeons’ Clinical Decision Making, investigates how mental depletion, caused by a long session of decision making, affects surgeon’s decision to operate. Exploiting a natural experiment, we find that surgeons are less likely to schedule an operation for patients who have appointment late during the work shift than for patients who have appointment at the beginning of the work shift. Understanding how the quality of medical decisions depends on when the patient is seen is important for achieving both efficiency and fairness in health care, where long shifts are popular. The fifth essay, Preferences for Outcome Editing in Monetary and Social Contexts, compares whether individuals use the same rules for mental representation of monetary outcomes (e.g., purchases, expenses) as for social outcomes (e.g., having nice time with friends). Outcome editing is an operation in mental accounting that determines whether individuals prefer to first combine multiple outcomes before their evaluation (integration) or evaluate each outcome separately (segregation). I find that the majority of individuals express different preferences for outcome editing in the monetary context than in the social context. Further, while the results on the editing of monetary outcomes are consistent with theoretical predictions, no existing model can explain the editing of social outcomes.

Ekonomy i psychology po celém světě vždy zajímala otázka procesu lidského rozhodování. Eko- nomové zd·razňují význam teorie úžitku během rozhodování, kdežto psychologové se zaměřují na r·zné vnitřní a vnější stimuly ovlivňující naše rozhodnutí. Oba tyto přístupy m·žeme najít v be- haviorální ekonomií, kde oba koncepty mezi sebou těsně spolupracují. Znalost r·zných ekonomic- kých i psychologických faktor·, které ovlivňují náš výběr m·že být mimo jiné přínosná například ve výzkumu spropitného. Abychom našli r·zné d·vody pro placení spropitného, vytvořili jsme experiment ohledně výše spropitného u českých zákazník·. Procentuální výše spropitného byla zkoumána v závislosti na pohlaví obsluhy, velikosti skupiny, která navštívila restauraci, velikosti účtu na jednu osobu a také byl zkoumán vliv tří na sobě nezávislých intervencí. Tyto intervence byly zaměřeny na altruistické chování, reciprocitu a dobrou náladu zp·sobenou personalizací. Výsledky experimentu jsou překvapující a neshodují se s výsledky z předchozích experiment·. Bylo zjištěno, že intervence spojené s altruismem a reciprocitou mají negativní vliv na výši spro- pitného, avšak intervence spojená s personalizací nemá žádný vliv na spropitné. Ve výsledku se také poukazuje na klíčový vliv země, ve které je experiment proveden. 1