TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Bašić, Zvonimir
AU  - Bortolotti, Stefania
AU  - Salicath, Daniel
AU  - Schmidt, Stefan
AU  - Schneider, Sebastian O.
AU  - Sutter, Matthias
        TI  - One Size Fits All?  The Interplay of Incentives, Effort Provision, and Personality
        PY  - 2024/Sep/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 17287
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp17287
        AB  - Incentives are supposed to increase effort, yet individuals react differently to incentives. We examine this heterogeneity by investigating how personal characteristics, preferences, and socio-economic background relate to incentives and performance in a real effort task. We analyze the performance of 1,933 high-school students under a Fixed, Variable, or Tournament payment. Productivity and beliefs about relative performance, but hardly any personal characteristics, play a decisive role for performance when payment schemes are exogenously imposed. Only when given the choice to select the payment scheme, personality traits, economic preferences and socioeconomic background matter. Algorithmic assignment of payment schemes could improve performance, earnings, and utility, as we show.
        KW  - effort
KW  - productivity
KW  - incentives
KW  - personality traits
KW  - preferences
KW  - socio-economic background
KW  - ability
KW  - heterogeneity
KW  - sorting
KW  - algorithm
KW  - lab-in-the-field experiment
        ER  -