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American Economic Review Vol. 99 No. 3 2009

Cooperation and Competition in Intergenerational Experiments in the Field and the Laboratory

Gary Charness1; Marie Claire Villeval2

1 Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2127 North Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9210. · 2 University of Lyon, CNRS, GATE, 93, Chemin de Mouilles, 69130, Ecully, France, and IZA, Germany.

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Abstract

There is economic pressure to postpone the retirement age, but employers are still reluctant to employ older workers. We investigate the comparative behavior of juniors and seniors in experiments conducted both onsite with the employees of two large firms and in a conventional laboratory environment with students and retirees. We show that seniors are no more risk averse than juniors and are typically more cooperative; both juniors and working seniors respond strongly to competition. The implication is that it may be beneficial to define additional incentives near the end of the career to motivate and retain older workers.

DOI
10.1257/aer.99.3.956
Volume
99
Issue
3
Pages
956-978
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

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