Aging and Attitudes Towards Strategic Uncertainty and Competition: An Artefactual Field Experiment in a Swiss Bank

Thierry Madies (thierry.madies@unifr.ch), Marie Claire Villeval and Malgorzata Wasmer (malgorzata.wasmer@yahoo.com)
Additional contact information
Thierry Madies: University of Fribourg

No 6642, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the attitudes of junior and senior employees towards strategic uncertainty and competition, by means of a market entry game inspired by Camerer and Lovallo (1999). Seniors exhibit higher entry rates compared to juniors, especially when earnings depend on relative performance. This difference persists after controlling for attitudes towards non-strategic uncertainty and for beliefs on others' competitiveness and ability. Social image matters, as evidenced by the fact that seniors enter more when they predict others enter more and when they are matched with a majority of juniors. This contradicts the stereotype of risk averse and less competitive older employees.

Keywords: experiment; confidence; self-image; competitiveness; ambiguity; risk; aging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D83 J14 J24 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2012-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published - revised version published as 'Intergenerational Attitudes Towards Strategic Uncertainty and Competition' in: European Economic Review, 2013, 61, 153-168.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6642.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Aging and Attitudes Towards Strategic Uncertainty and Competition: An Artefactual Field Experiment in a Swiss Bank (2012)
Working Paper: Aging and Attitudes Towards Strategic Uncertainty and Competition: An Artefactual Field Experiment in a Swiss Bank (2012)
Working Paper: Aging and attitudes towards strategic uncertainty and competition: An artefactual field experiment in a Swiss bank (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6642

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).