xLab

behavioural research lab

Women earn more than men in a matrilineal society

May 14, 2019

This is one result of the paper “On the Cultural Basis of Gender Differences in Negotiation” by S. Andersen, S. Ertac, U. Gneezy, J. A. List, and S. Maximiano, recently published in Experimental Economics. The authors use data from a lab in the field experiment and a natural field experiment to explore the negotiation culture in matrilineal and patriarchal societies, and to study how culture and social structure influence bargaining behaviour across gender. Paper available here.

Dynamics matters in implementing matching algorithms

May 10, 2019

In University admissions, students submit rankings of courses to a matchmaker and an algorithm produces a matching of students to courses. In “Static versus Dynamic Deferred Acceptance in School Choice: Theory and Experiment“, published in Games and Economic Behavior, the authors F. Klijn, J. Pais, and M. Vorsatz show that students learn to play the matching game better when the matching process is dynamic, i.e., when students go through the steps of the algorithm. Dynamic matching produces better solutions in what efficiency and fairness are concerned than the static implementation of the corresponding algorithm.