Inter- and Intragenerational Differences in Corrupt Behavior: The Development of Morals after German Reunification

Last registered on February 11, 2020

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

Different although Equal: An Experimental Investigation of Inter- and Intragenerational Differences in Corrupt Behavior facing Germany's East-West Stigma

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0005397

Initial registration date

February 10, 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

February 10, 2020, 10:49 AM EST

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

Last updated

February 11, 2020, 7:15 AM EST

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

Locations

Country

Germany

Region

North Rhine-Westphalia

Country

Germany

Region

Brandenburg

Primary Investigator

Name

Thorsten Auer

Affiliation

Paderborn University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Timo Berg

PI Affiliation

BTU Cottbus

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Christin Hoffmann

PI Affiliation

BTU Cottbus

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2020-04-01

End date

2020-09-30

Keywords

Post-conflict

Additional Keywords

Attitude towards corruption, Inter- and Intragenerational differences, East and West Germany

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Abstract

30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Allensbach Institute consulted adolescents between 15 and 24 years in Germany to understand their educational situation, their evaluation of future perspectives, and their attitude towards current social and economic challenges. This survey reports crucial differences between young people in East and West Germany. This result is remarkable considering that this generation grew up in a unified Germany. Nevertheless, the youth seems to be strongly shaped by economic, cultural and social differences that were once established in the divided Germany. These differences may stem from acquired preferences concerning solidarity, state intervention and the distribution of income.
Our goal is to understand if differences revealed in cooperation and solidarity, as well as pro-state attitudes and governmental control are still prevalent among young Germans, who are not directly influenced by two different regimes. Additionally, we want to compare these results with those of older generations, who actually lived under different regimes in one state. We aim to contribute to the literature by playing the public good as well as the bribery game in an experimental setting with groups of different age in East and West Germany.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Auer, Thorsten, Timo Berg and Christin Hoffmann. 2020. "Different although Equal: An Experimental Investigation of Inter- and Intragenerational Differences in Corrupt Behavior facing Germany's East-West Stigma." AEA RCT Registry. February 11. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5397-1.1

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

We play a public good game as well as a bribery game with different groups concerning age and origin in Germany. We implement both games in a lab-in-the-field design avoiding a strictly laboratory setting and this way being able to include different groups in their natural environment.

Intervention Start Date

2020-07-15

Intervention End Date

2020-08-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Bribery Game: Decisions to make a transfer by one player and decisions to accept transfers for bribery and implement a strategy harming the general public in the game by th eother player over all rounds.

Public Good: Contributions to the public asset by each player in the group over all rounds.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We intend to contribute to this literature by running a lab-in-the-field experiment. As we do not want to rely on students as participants only, we use ClassEx in order to run the experiments using mobile devices (Giamattei & Lambsdorff, 2019). This enables us to collect data for different age groups in East and West Germany.
The bribery game and the public good game will be played independently. Regarding the bribery game, pairs will be built and make concecutive decisions depending on the action of the other player. Decisions will not only have an impact on the outcome of the partner but also all other players involved in the game simultaneously.
In the public good game groups of five are formed and they will male simultaneous decisions on how much of their endownment they transfer to their private account and the public asset going along with different outcomes for the individual respectively the group.

Experimental Design Details

In the bribery game one player will decide on a transfer amount, while the other player accepts or rejects the offer and consecutively implement a strategy A or B with different consequences including a drop out lottery for both players when agreeing on a transfer. This procedure will be repeated over 16 rounds.
In the public good game five players will form a group and be given an endownment of 10 Tokens. They can invest this endownment into a private account giving them a personal return of 0.6 per Token or into a public asset giving every player in the group a return of 0.2 per Token invested. Decisions by the players will be done simultaneously. This procedure is repeated for 10 rounds.

Randomization Method

Randomization done by the experimental program's algorithm

Randomization Unit

Overall stratified randomization by age and region.
In the game randomization on the individual level.

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

2 * 210 (for the Eastern and Western federal state)

Sample size: planned number of observations

140 students/pupils, 140 adults, 140 seniors

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

70 students/pupils East Germany, 70 students/pupils West Germany, 70 adults East Germany, 70 adults West Germany, 70 seniors East Germany, 70 seniors West Germany

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

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