Suchergebnisse

The allocation of time and effort within the communities of Open Source Software developers is an interesting yet relatively unexplored area. How can coordination be achieved, absent monetary rewards? How do developers choose where to direct their efforts amongst the thousands of existing software projects? How come the vast majority of Open Source projects is a failure, i.e. does not go beyond the announcement phase? The paper proposes a simple dynamic stochastic model that addresses these issues. The model is a non-strategic N-player dynamic interaction, in which players are asked to open, join or leave projects that are assigned a random probability of survival, a proxy for the project-launcher skills. The number and nature of open projects varying with time, players face a continuously chang- ing landscape. The model is simulated using a simple agent-based code, and tested in a lab with human subjects. Results show that the model can replicate most of the stylized facts of the SourceForge.net dataset, namely the high number of lurkers hopping from project to project and the highly skewed distribution. The experimental evidence supports the main behavioral hypothesis of the model, interestingly showing that human subject tend to consistently launch more projects than maximizing behavior would imply

In this article we use the "Click" version of the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task to explore preferences for conformism. In the task subjects can infer the behavior of others from the mass of clicks heard. This signal is uninformative about the precise choices of the other participants, and never mentioned in the instructions. We control the exposure of subjects to clicks by implementing treatments with and without earmuffs. We further test the effect of the introduction of a common rather than individual resolution of uncertainty, still keeping individual payoffs independent of other subjects' choices. We find strong evidence of conformist behavior even in such an inhospitable environment. Simply hearing the others clicking marginally affects subjects behavior. Introducing a common random draw results in a dramatic shift of the average choices toward risk loving, in particular by women, which is consistent with social preference considerations.

This paper reconsiders the wide agreement that females are more risk averse than males. We survey the existing experimental literature, finding that significance and magnitude of gender differences are task specific. We gather data from 54 replications of the Holt and Laury risk elicitation method, involving about 7,000 subjects. Gender differences appear in less than 10% of the studies and are significant but negligible in magnitude once all the data are pooled. Results are confirmed by structural estimations, which also support a constant relative risk aversion representation of preferences. Gender differences correlate with the presence of a safe option and fixed probabilities in the elicitation method.

Evidence of illusion of control—the fact that people believe to have control over pure chance events—is a recurrent finding in experimental psychology. Results in economics find instead little to no support. In this paper we test whether this dissonant result across disciplines is due to the fact that economists have implemented only one form of illusory control. We identify and separately tests in an incentive-compatible design two types of control: (a) over the resolution of uncertainty, as usually done in the economics literature, and (b) over the choice of the lottery, as sometimes done in the psychology literature but without monetary payoffs. Results show no evidence of illusion of control, neither on choices nor on beliefs about the likelihood of winning.