Amount Awarded: $25,000
The aim of this research project is to continue the wildly successful collaboration between the team economists led by Prof. Ingvild Almas at NHH and Profs. Auffhammer/Hsiang/Miguel at Berkeley. The proposed project is targeted at deepening our understanding of how temperature affects economic decision making in a laboratory setting. Over the previous year we have built physical and team infrastructure which completed experiments with close to 2000 subjects in Kenya and Berkeley. We continue to push the frontier of our understanding of the heat/conflict interface. Our preliminary results showed precisely estimated zero effects of heat on all dimensions of economic decision making except for a measure of economic destruction - and only in Kenya. In this follow up study, we will expose subjects to temperatures for a longer period of time and provide three treatments of temperature, pushing the highest temperature to 33 degrees Celsius in both Kenya and Berkeley. The study design will zoom in on the composition of subjects in terms of (a) cognitive ability, (b) income and (c) ethnic minorities, which are dimensions along which we observed statistically significant increases in conflict measures in the previous experiment. The entirety of the budget will be spent on subject payments and a travel for Prof. Almas to Berkeley and Prof. Auffhammer to Oslo. The remaining research support will be provided by the chair funds of the Co-PIs and other team members.