Tag Archives: john list

Trading changes how brain processes selling decisions

Market experience leaves people less susceptible to economic bias, study finds

Experience in trading changes how the human brain evaluates the sale of goods, muting a well-established economic bias known as the endowment effect, according to researchers at the University of Chicago. (more…)

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Economics study finds volume discounts don’t increase profitability for video games

Experiment involved more than 14 million app players

Discounts tied to buying large quantities of virtual goods have little impact on profitability and do not increase the number of customers making purchases, according to economists at the University of Chicago. (more…)

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Women donate less to charity than men in some contexts

Given the chance, women are more likely than men to opt out of a request to give a charitable donation, a group of economists have found.

The issue of which gender is more generous has been debated for years. A new field experiment conducted by scholars at the University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley shows that when it’s easy to avoid making a donation, such as not responding to a door-to-door solicitor, women are less likely than men to give. (more…)

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Student Performance Improves When Teachers Given Incentives Upfront

A bonus payment to teachers can improve student academic performance — but only when it is given upfront, on the condition that part of the money must be returned if student performance fails to improve, research at the University of Chicago shows.

The study showed that students gained as much as a 10 percentile increase in their scores compared to students with similar backgrounds — if their teacher received a bonus at the beginning of the year, with conditions attached. There was no gain for students when teachers were offered the bonus at the end of the school year, the research found. (more…)

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