More Effort with Less Pay: On Information Avoidance, Belief Design, and Performance

Nora Szech, Steffen Huck and Lukas Wenner

VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: In a tedious real effort task, subjects know that their piece rate is either low or ten times higher. When subjects are informed about their piece rate realization, they adapt their performance. One third of subjects nevertheless forego this instrumental information when given the choice - and perform stunningly well. Agents who are uninformed regarding their piece rate tend to outperform all others, even those who know that their piece rate is high. This also holds for enforced instead of self-selected information avoidance. All our findings can be captured by a model of optimally distorted expectations following Brunnermeier and Parker (2005).

JEL-codes: D83 D84 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: More Effort with Less Pay: On Information Avoidance, Belief Design and Performance (2015)
Working Paper: More effort with less pay: On information avoidance, belief design and performance (2015)
Working Paper: More effort with less pay: On information avoidance, belief design and performance (2015)
Working Paper: More effort with less pay: On information avoidance, belief design and performance (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145644

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