Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/176391 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
cege Discussion Papers No. 343
Publisher: 
University of Göttingen, Center for European, Governance and Economic Development Research (cege), Göttingen
Abstract: 
In this paper, we discuss learning behavior and the heterogeneity of subjects' ability to perform in real-effort tasks. Afterwards, we present a novel variant of Erkal et al.'s (2011) encryption real-effort task which aims to minimize learning behavior in repeated settings. In the task, participants encrypt words into numbers. In our variant, we apply a double-randomization mechanism to minimize learning and heterogeneity. Existing experiments with repeated real-effort tasks find a performance increase of 12-14% between the first and second half. By contrast, our task mitigates learning behavior down to 2% between the first and second half. The data show that subjects show a small heterogeneity in performance.
Subjects: 
Experimental Methods
Learning Behavior
Real Effort
JEL: 
C90
C91
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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