give_me_challenge

Here you can find the data and replication code for my "Give Me a Challenge or Give Me a Raise" paper, upcoming in Experimental Economics.

• Folder "ztree" contains the treatment file for ztree

• Folder "raw_data" contains the .xls files generated by zTree, the files are in a format YYMMDD_HHMM.xls

• Folder "data" contains the processed data used for analysis

  • "data_demog.csv" contains the subject-level data from the demographic survey, it has the following variables:

    • session - session date and time in the format "M_DD_YY_HH"
    • id - unique subject id (the key variable)
    • age - age in years
    • gender - subjects' gender
    • race - subjects' racial or ethnic background
    • marital - subject's marital status
    • major - subject's major
    • gpa - Grade Point Average
    • year - year in program (Freshman, Sophomore, etc.)
    • hh_size - the number of people in a subject's household
    • hh_inc - the total income of a subject's household
    • par_inc - the total income of a subject's parents

  • "data_effort.csv" contains the subject-by-round data (keyed by "id" and "round") from the experimental task, it has the following variables:

    • session - session date and time in the format "M_DD_YY_HH"
    • id - unique subject id
    • round - round of the effort task
    • effort - chosen effort level between 0 and 1
    • payoff - project's monetary outcome
    • treatment - description of the treatment given by the values of the treatment variables, in a format "difficulty-wage-bonus-cost"
    • treatment_id - a unique id for a treatment
    • theta, w, z, k - the values of the treatment variables: difficulty, wage, bonus, and cost, respectively
    • good - the monetary outcome in case of success
    • bad - the monetary outcome in case of failure
    • succ, fail - indicators for whether the project was successful or not

• Folder "r_code" contains the R code used to analyze the data

  • "graph_settings.R" is an auxiliary code that sets up how graphs look like
  • "master_reduced_form.R" performs the reduced-form analysis (Sections 5.1 and 5.2 of the paper)
  • "master_structural.R" performs the structural analysis (Section 5.3)