Experimental Design
The business competition involves teams of two solving a series of business tasks: accounting, business intelligence, route optimization/logistics, sales, and coordination. The accounting task requires real effort to conduct a series of calculations, the performance is measured by number of accounting problems correctly solved. The business intelligence quizzes participants on knowledge about a range of industries (7 industries covered for each quiz), including market sizing and naming major players and trends, and performance is measured by number of correct answers. The route optimization task requires participants to find a cost minimizing path from a starting point to an ending point on a network (represented by a graph where edges are labelled with different costs), performance is measured by cost of the path. The sales task requires the participants to come up with a sale pitch (up to 80 characters) for either a hair product, a dating
App, or a TV series, and the performance is measured by the average rating by a panel of 100 consumers recruited from Prolific. The coordination task is the Schelling game (10 different prompts, where 4 are gendered, 4 are geographical, and 2 are on random
topics), and performance is measured by number of matched responses.
A list of actual questions for one round of the accounting task is attached to this pre-registration.
A list of actual questions for one round of the route optimization task is attached to this pre-registration. In each round, one route optimization would involve the contestant being randomly assigned to only see the left side or the right side while the second route optimization allows the contestant to choose left or right (the team members can choose different sides so that they can collectively see the full map).
The actual prompt for one round of the sales pitch task is attached to this pre-registration. (which product is to be sold will be randomized)
A list of actual questions for one round of the Schelling game is attached to this pre-registration.
The business intelligence quizzes participants on knowledge about a range of industries (7 industries covered for each quiz). A sample of actual questions for one round/quiz is attached to this pre-registration. Two of the industries include readings (half of the participants will be in teams where each team member will be randomized to read about one of these industries, while the other half will be in teams where both team members will read about the same industry). These industry readings are generated by copy-and-pasting the "At a Glance" and "Performance" sections (for "Performance, it includes up to "Performance Snapshot") of IBISWorld Industry reports for randomly selected industries (industries as defined by IBISWorld) into ChatGPT4 with the prompt to summarize the material into about 400 words. The quiz questions for these industries are generated, again, with ChatGPT4 with the prompt to generate multiple choice questions based on the excerpt on the industry. The participants will compete on the quiz on the raw total of correct answers in one round of individual contest and in one round of team contest. They participate in a team round where they can choose a scoring system for 2 pairs of industries (one pair of 2 industries with reading materials, and one pair of gendered industries): (a) best answer among the 2 within the team; (b) both has to be correct to score; or (c) each correct answer earns point [sum]. Each of the 3 scoring systems generate the same expected score assuming the optimal choice where a player who read about an industry scores all questions correctly while a player who did not read about an industry has 1/4 chance of scoring each question correctly. The teams can also choose for the same 2 pairs of industries (one pair of 2 industries with reading materials, and one pair of gendered industries) whether they want for (i) the sum of the scores of each of the industries within the pair to count; or (ii) only the lower score of the industries to count and be scaled up by a factor. After completing the round of quiz scored by this chosen scoring system, the teams gets to choose whether to read about 2 different industries (different from previous rounds of quiz) or both read the same. After which they play a round and get to choose a scoring system from the above options that yield them an additional award of points.