Speaker Andrej Woerner (University of Amsterdam) will present two different papers:
- Exercising More with a Matched Bet
Using a field experiment, I study a new commitment device designed to help people stick to their exercising goals. The device is a matched bet that satisfies strict budget-balancedness. In a theoretical model I show that offering a matched bet helps both sophisticated and naïve procrastinators. My experimental results confirm my theoretical predictions. Offering a matched bet has a significant positive effect on gym attendance. The effect is largest for people who procrastinated exercising in the past. Overall, the matched bet proves a promising device to help people exercise more. I also discuss how a matched bet could be applied to other areas such as smoking cessation, weight loss and academic performance.
- An Experimental Comparison of Crowdfunding Mechanisms
Crowdfunding has become an important fundraising practice but has received little attention in the economic literature so far. We introduce a new crowdfunding mechanism, the Generalized Moulin-Shenker mechanism (GMS), and show that, in theory, the GMS is a promising alternative to the prevailing All-Or-Nothing mechanism (AON). We then test our theoretical predictions in a lab experiment and compare the mechanisms’ performance. Contrary to our theoretical predictions, we find that AON outperforms GMS, both from the producer’s and society’s point of view. Our findings are caused by a tendency of backers in GMS to underbid which prevails over time as effective feedback is very limited. This motivated us to explore a dynamic variant of GMS in the lab. The initial results suggest that this mechanism performs better than both the original GMS and AON. Joint with Sander Onderstal and Arthur Schram.
