Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-8gtf8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-21T10:09:56.884Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The slider task: an example of restricted inference on incentive effects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2025

Felipe A. Araujo ,
Erin Carbone ,
Lynn Conell-Price ,
Marli W. Dunietz ,
Ania Jaroszewicz ,
Rachel Landsman ,
Diego Lamé ,
Lise Vesterlund ,
Stephanie W. Wang  and
Alistair J. Wilson
Felipe A. Araujo
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
Erin Carbone
Affiliation:
GSPIA, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
Lynn Conell-Price
Affiliation:
Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA
Marli W. Dunietz
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
Ania Jaroszewicz
Affiliation:
Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA
Rachel Landsman
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
Diego Lamé
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
Lise Vesterlund*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
Stephanie W. Wang
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
Alistair J. Wilson
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
*
e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Real-effort experiments are frequently used when examining a response to incentives. For a real-effort task to be well suited for such an exercise its measurable output must be sufficiently elastic over the incentives considered. The popular slider task in Gill and Prowse (Am Econ Rev 102(1):469–503, 2012) has been characterized as satisfying this requirement, and the task is increasingly used to investigate the response to incentives. However, a between-subject examination of the slider task’s response to incentives has not been conducted. We provide such an examination with three different piece-rate incentives: half a cent, two cents, and eight cents per slider completed. We find only a small increase in performance: despite a 1500 % increase in the incentives, output only increases by 5 %. With such an inelastic response we caution that for typical experimental sample sizes and incentives the slider task is unlikely to demonstrate a meaningful and statistically significant performance response.

Keywords

Real-effortSlider taskIncentives

JEL classification

D01: Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles J30: General C90: General
Type
Original Paper
Information
Journal of the Economic Science Association , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © Economic Science Association 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This paper was written as a joint classroom project among faculty and students for a graduate course in experimental economics at the University of Pittsburgh.

References

Bull, C., Schotter, A., Weigelt, K. (1987). Tournaments and piece rates: An experimental study. Journal of Political Economy, 95, 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corgnet, B., Hernán-González, R., Schniter, E. (2014). Why real leisure really matters: Incentive effects on real effort in the laboratory. Experimental Economics, 18, 284–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckartz, K., (2014). Task enjoyment and opportunity costs in the lab: The effect of financial incentives on performance in real effort tasks, Jena Economic Research Papers, 2014-005.Google Scholar
Fehr, E., Kirchsteiger, G., Riedl, A. (1993). Does fairness prevent market clearing? An experimental investigation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108, 437–459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischbacher, U. (2007). z-tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments. Experimental economics, 10(2), 171–178. 10.1007/s10683-006-9159-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gächter, S., Huang, L., & Sefton, M. (2015). Combining “real effort” with induced effort costs: the ball-catching task. Experimental Economics. doi:10.1007/s10683-015-9465-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gill, D., Prowse, V. (2012). A structural analysis of disappointment aversion in a real effort competition. American Economic Review, 102(1), 469–503. 10.1257/aer.102.1.469CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lilley, A., Slonim, R. (2014). The price of warm glow. Journal of Public Economics, 114, 58–74. 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2013.12.004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nalbantian, H., & Schotter, A. (1997). Productivity under group incentives: An experimental study. American Economic Review, 87(3), 314–341.Google Scholar
Schotter, A., & Weigelt, K. (1992). Asymmetric tournaments, equal opportunity laws, and affirmative action: Some experimental results. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107(2), 511–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slonim, R., & Roth, A. E. (1998) Learning in high stakes ultimatum games: An experiment in the Slovak Republic. Econometrica, 63(3), 569–596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar