Author(s)

Jing Davis¹, Steven Schwartz^2*, Richard Young³

¹Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA.
²School of Management, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA.
³Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.

Prior literature has observed a “hidden return to incentives” where principals receive more cooperation from agents when formal incentives are available but not used than when not available. Previous experiments are replicated using a gift-exchange rather than a trust game. Hidden returns to incentives are not observed, and in fact the results show the opposite. Suggestions for future research are provided.

Incentives, Trust Game, Gift-Exchange Game

Davis, J. , Schwartz, S. and Young, R. (2017) A Reexamination of “The Hidden Return to Incentives”. Theoretical Economics Letters, 7, 1505-1510. doi: 10.4236/tel.2017.75101.