Cooperation or Competition? A Field Experiment on Non-monetary Learning Incentives

Maria Bigoni, Margherita Fort, Nardotto Mattia () and Tommaso Reggiani ()
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Nardotto Mattia: Department of Economics, University of Cologne, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, Cologne, Germany

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2015, vol. 15, issue 4, 1753-1792

Abstract: We assess the effect of two antithetic non-monetary incentive schemes based on grading rules on students’ effort, using experimental data. We randomly assigned students to a tournament scheme that fosters competition between paired up students, a cooperative scheme that promotes information sharing and collaboration between students and a baseline treatment in which students can neither compete nor cooperate. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that competition induces higher effort with respect to cooperation, whereas cooperation does not increase effort with respect to the baseline treatment. Nonetheless, we find a strong gender effect since this result holds only for men while women do not react to this type of non-monetary incentives.

Keywords: competition; cooperation; education; experimental economics; gender differences; incentives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A22 C93 I20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2014-0109

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