Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/127337 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Paper Series No. 522
Publisher: 
University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
The "aging employee" has recently become a hot topic in many fields of behavioural research. With the aim to determine the effects of different incentive schemes (competition, social or increased monetary incentives) on performance of young and older subjects, we look at behaviour of a group of younger and older adults on a well-established real effort task. We show that older adults differ from younger adults in their performance in all conditions, but not in the improvement between conditions. The age difference in performance is however driven by women. While we replicate the gender difference in competitiveness found in the literature, we do not find a significant age difference in competitiveness. Social incentives have an at least as strong or even stronger effect on performance than increased monetary incentives. This effect is driven by men; women do not show an increase in performance with social incentives.
Subjects: 
aging
competition
social production functions
experiment
incentives
JEL: 
C72
C91
J10
J33
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
433 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.