TY - JOUR
T1 - Effort is not a monotonic function of skills
T2 - Results from a global mobile experiment
AU - Grabiszewski, Konrad
AU - Horenstein, Alex
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/8
Y1 - 2020/8
N2 - At the core of economic theory is the monotonicity hypothesis: an agent's effort, as a function of their skills, is either non-decreasing or non-increasing, but not both. To test this hypothesis, we use data from Blues and Reds, a mobile app designed to conduct economic experiments that consists of a series of interactive puzzles. The sample includes 6,463 subjects from 141 countries. We measure subjects’ skills and effort levels using their response times. We replicate the same test 22 times. Surprisingly, each time we find that the optimal effort is not a monotonic function of skills but rather has a U-shape contradicting the monotonicity hypothesis.
AB - At the core of economic theory is the monotonicity hypothesis: an agent's effort, as a function of their skills, is either non-decreasing or non-increasing, but not both. To test this hypothesis, we use data from Blues and Reds, a mobile app designed to conduct economic experiments that consists of a series of interactive puzzles. The sample includes 6,463 subjects from 141 countries. We measure subjects’ skills and effort levels using their response times. We replicate the same test 22 times. Surprisingly, each time we find that the optimal effort is not a monotonic function of skills but rather has a U-shape contradicting the monotonicity hypothesis.
KW - Effort
KW - Experimental game theory
KW - Mobile experiment
KW - Monotonicity of choice
KW - Skills
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85086883162&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85086883162&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.05.011
DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.05.011
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85086883162
VL - 176
SP - 634
EP - 652
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
SN - 0167-2681
ER -