Equal Opportunity 2

Last registered on April 19, 2024
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Equal Opportunity 2
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0013323
Initial registration date
April 08, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
April 16, 2024, 1:06 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
April 19, 2024, 1:57 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Samuel Priestley
Affiliation
Texas A&M University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Catherine Eckel
PI Affiliation
Texas A&M University
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PI Name
Marco Palma
PI Affiliation
Texas A&M University
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2024-04-08
End date
2024-06-14
Keywords
Behavior, Firms & Productivity, Lab, Labor, Other, Welfare
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial is based on or builds upon one or more prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study is an update from our initial equal opportunity experiment. The initial equal opportunity experiment is now considered a pilot experiment.

Equal opportunity has wide applicability throughout society. It touches upon access to education, employment, legal representation, etc. Given that equal opportunity has different meanings to different people (i.e., equal opportunity in outcomes, resources, access, etc.), we use a simplified definition based on the different types of equal opportunity mentioned in Arneson (2018). We define equal opportunity to mean that individuals should have similar access to “resources” except when one’s innate ability leads to a difference in resource allocation.

This project explores how economic inequality created by an institution affects productivity, and how productivity resulting from the institutional structure affects views on fairness and redistribution. We do this by setting up a controlled laboratory experiment in a two-person competitive environment consisting of a real-effort task where we vary the amount of time subjects have to perform the task. We use time as a resource in our competitive environment and we vary the amount of resources to compete under institutions that provide an advantage to subjects based on different inequality sources. More specifically we set up three inequality institutions that provide an advantage to the higher performer, the lower performer individual, or randomly to one of the individuals in the group. The control condition has the same amount of time for both participants.

The pre-analysis plan includes details on the structure of the experiment and our empirical strategy.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Eckel, Catherine, Marco Palma and Samuel Priestley. 2024. "Equal Opportunity 2." AEA RCT Registry. April 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.13323-1.1
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
This experiment consists of four conditions, each varying the degree of economic inequality by changing the amount of time subjects have to compete in a real effort task.
Intervention Start Date
2024-04-08
Intervention End Date
2024-06-14

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Production. Production is based on the subjects' performance in the real-effort task.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Redistribution and fairness
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Redistribution and fairness are measured by the amount of income a subject gives to another subject and the belief elicitation question.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Throughout the experiment, subjects participate in a real-effort production assignment in three different phases. Aspects of the production assignment will be altered during each phase. The production assignment involves subjects having to correctly solve two two-digit addition problems within a limited amount of time. Subjects’ earnings are based on the correct number of problems they solve. Each phase consists of one or more blocks. A block consists of five rounds each. Subjects will be paired with another subject in each session. After the production assignment, subjects will complete a survey. In the next subsections, we explain details of each phase of the production assignment, instructions given to each subject, and survey details.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Computer
Randomization Unit
Randomization is done at the group level.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
160 people.
Sample size: planned number of observations
3,200 rounds.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
40 people per treatment arm.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Texas A&M University IRB
IRB Approval Date
2022-06-23
IRB Approval Number
IRB2022-0490D
Analysis Plan

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