SignificanceReciprocity motivates a wide range of cooperative behaviors (e.g., tipping, exchange of favors, customer loyalty, etc.). It is typically assumed that, after a reciprocal relationship is triggered, reciprocal motives remain stable over time. Using a large-scale field study, we show that this is not the case. Instead, we find that reciprocity decays rapidly over time. We analyze donation solicitations sent from a university hospital system to its patients and show that patients are less likely to donate when more time has elapsed since they were treated. In addition to informing our understanding of reciprocity, our results have considerable practical importance, as many charitable organizations raise funds from those who they previously served (e.g., schools, hospitals, religious organizations, humane societies, etc.).

In this article, the authors ask how the institutional design of vocational education and training (VET) affects worker adaptability to changing skill demands over the life cycle. They compare two types of VET systems. Collectivist systems have high employer involvement and focus on specific skills, whereas Statist systems have lower employer involvement and focus more on general skills. Based on prior research demonstrating the importance of general skills in learning new skills, the authors hypothesize that worker adaptability will be higher in Statist VET systems than in Collectivist VET systems. Using a triple-difference model on data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, they find that as age increases, a significantly steeper decline in worker adaptability occurs within Collectivist systems compared to Statist systems. Results provide an explanation behind the diminishing employment returns to employer-dominated VET systems found in prior studies.

We conducted a field experiment with a charitable group to investigate whether giving the donor an option to write a personalized holiday card to the recipient influences giving behavior. Over 1500 households were approached in a door-to-door campaign and randomized to either a treatment group, in which donors were presented with the option to write their own card for the recipient, or a control group, in which donors were not given the option to write their own card for the recipient. We predict that treatment should increase contributions through making the gift more meaningful, but may also decrease contributions by increasing the transaction and social costs of donating. We find evidence in favor of the negative effects of costs from treatment, and no evidence of increased giving. We also observe that our treatment crowds out small donors (donors giving $5 or less). October 22, 2013 AbstractWe conducted a field experiment with a charitable group to investigate whether giving the donor an option to write a personal message to the recipient influences giving behavior. Over 1,500 households were approached in a door-to-door campaign and randomized to either a control or a treatment in which donors could include a card for the recipient. We predict that treatment should increase contributions through making the gift more meaningful, but may also decrease contribution rate by increasing the social or other cost of donating. We find evidence in favor of the cost effect, and no evidence of increased giving.JEL Classifications: C93, H41, D64

Parental investments shape children's educational specializations. Using a longitudinal study, we find that parents invest more in daughters than sons at ages three through five. We find that early parental investment can explain persistently higher English scores for girls than boys four to six years later. However, there is no gender gap in math. Parental investments at ages three through five appear to contribute to girls' advantage in English but have little impact on math. Our results suggest that parental investments at early ages contributes to girls' comparative advantage in English.

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Leaving school to work trades off schooling with onthe-job human capital acquisition. How do industry shocks impact how youth make this trade-off? Exploiting the geography of natural resources, I estimate the effect of oil and gas job prospects on college and work outcomes. Using CPS data, I find that these job opportunities decrease college-going for men but not women. I next assess the importance of this schooling loss for later outcomes using longitudinal geocoded NLSY79 data. I find permanent declines in college attainment but gains in employment and earnings at ages 25-30, driven by cohorts who reach college age during industry booms. The results suggest that informal human capital can compensate for schooling loss for the men who leave school for oil and gas work. They speak to the need for further research on non-college work as a form of human capital investment outside of the traditional college pathway.

Research has shown that giving disadvantaged families financial incentives to invest in their children could decrease socioeconomic inequality by enhancing human capital formation. Yet, within the household how are such gains achieved? We use a field experiment to investigate how parents allocate time when they receive financial incentives. We find that incentives increase investment in the target child. But, parents achieve these gains by substituting away from time spent with the child's sibling(s). An unintended consequence is that intrahousehold inequality increases and aggregate gains from the program are overstated when focusing only on target children.