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Competing Now and Then

Last registered on January 21, 2020
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Competing Now and Then
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0005284
Initial registration date
January 20, 2020

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
January 21, 2020, 1:56 PM EST

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

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Olga Shurchkov
Affiliation
Wellesley College
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2020-01-30
End date
2020-04-30
Keywords
Gender, Labor
Additional Keywords
online experiment, competition, intertemporal choice
JEL code(s)
C90, J16, J71
Secondary IDs
Abstract
This project aims to investigate how having the option to delay entry into competition can affect the gender gap in the willingness to compete. If there is a gendered effect (women being more/less likely to compete when having the option to delay entry into competition), we would like to examine the mechanisms behind it, including gender differences in hyperbolic discounting, risk preferences, confidence, and the desire to prepare for the future task.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Shurchkov, Olga. 2020. "Competing Now and Then." AEA RCT Registry. January 21. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5284-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The experiment will be conducted online on Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) and will follow the seminal Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) design, with modification to the task being a counting zeros task. The main interventions involve the opportunity to choose payment scheme and/or a delay in task completion, opportunity to view information relevant to the task prior to task completion for those who delay, and the opportunity to change payment schemes in the future.
Intervention Start Date
2020-01-30
Intervention End Date
2020-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
A binary indicator that the subject chose a tournament payment scheme; A binary indicator that the subject chose to delay performance; A binary indicator that the subject chose to switch to another payment scheme in the future; A ranking of all payment/delay schemes; A binary indicator whether a subject used the study information provided
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
See pre-analysis plan

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Time spent on various decisions; Confidence in individual ability in the task under various payment schemes; Perception of gender stereotype associated with the task; explanation for choices from the post-experiment questionnaire
Measures of risk, competitiveness, and time preferences will be used for robustness checks, as specified in the pre-analysis plan.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The experiment consists of two main parts, where Part I takes place immediately as part of the original survey, while Part II takes place in the future, but may or may not take place for some subjects depending on treatment.
Part I begins with task performed under piece-rate payment scheme (round 1) and under tournament payment scheme (round 2). In round 3, subjects are randomly assigned to be in one of four treatments:
- Choice between piece-rate now and tournament now (Control)
- Choice between Piece Rate Later versus Tournament Later (Forced Delay); all subjects here further randomized into information and no information treatments
- Choice between Tournament Now versus Tournament Later (Forced Tournament); delaying subjects here further randomized into information and no information treatments
- Ranking between PR Now versus PR Later versus T Now versus T Later (Preference Ranking)
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done via Qualtrics on a computer
Randomization Unit
Randomization at the individual level
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
1200 subjects
Sample size: planned number of observations
1200 subjects
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Control: 200
Forced Delay No Info: 200
Forced Delay Info: 200
Forced Tournament No Info: 200
Forced Tournament Info: 200
Preference Ranking: 200
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Wellesley College Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2019-11-19
IRB Approval Number
N/A (Data collection approved and deemed exempt)
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials