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We conduct a laboratory experiment to study how locus of control operates through people's preferences and beliefs to influence their decisions. Using the principal-agent setting of the delegation game, we test four key channels that conceptually link locus of control to decision- making: (i) preference for agency; (ii) optimism and (iii) confidence regarding the return to effort; and (iv) illusion of control. Knowing the return and cost of stated effort, principals either retain or delegate the right to make an investment decision that generates payoffs for themselves and their agents. Extending the game to the context in which the return to stated effort is unknown allows us to explicitly study the relationship between locus of control and beliefs about the return to effort. We find that internal locus of control is linked to the preference for agency, an effect that is driven by women. We find no evidence that locus of control influences optimism and confidence about the return to stated effort, or that it operates through an illusion of control.

Better understanding and reducing gender gaps in the labor market remains an important policy goal. We study the role of advice in sustaining these gender gaps using a laboratory experiment. In the experiment, "advisers" advise "workers" to choose between a more ambitious and a less ambitious task based on the worker's subjective self-assessment. We expected female workers to be less confident and advisers to hold gender stereotypes, leading to a gender bias in advice. However, we find no evidence that women are less confident or that advice is gender-biased. Our results contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms driving gender differences in the labor market. They also call for caution when making general interpretations of research findings pointing to a gender bias in specific settings.

We introduce a novel incentive program aimed at decreasing school absenteeism based on the effect of voluntary promises in motivating desirable behaviour. In contrast to a standard program, in which students receive a reward conditional on having achieved a school attendance rate of at least 90 percent, in the promise program, they receive the reward up front, conditional on their commitment to invest their best efforts to reach the attendance target. We assess the effectiveness of the promise program through a field study involving Indigenous Australian high school students, a population who tends to have lower education achievement and socioeconomic advantage than their non-Indigenous counterparts. We find that the promise program significantly decreased unexplained absences compared to the standard program but that it did not influence overall school absences. Our findings suggest that voluntary promises coupled with small gifts are effective in influencing behaviour of disadvantaged students. At the same time, we need further research on how to best design such programs to achieve positive effects in reducing school absenteeism.

Ambition as the desire for personal achievement is an important driver of behavior. Using laboratory experiments, we study the role of social influence on ambition in two distinct domains of achievement, namely performance goals and task complexity. In the first case, participants set themselves a performance goal for a task they have to work on. The goal is associated with a proportional bonus that is added to a piece rate if the goal is reached. In the second case, they choose the complexity of the task, which is positively associated with the piece rate compensation and effort. In both cases we test whether observing peer choices influences own choices. We find strong evidence of peer effects on performance goals. In contrast, we find no support for peer effects on the choice of task complexity.

We study the effect of affirmative action on effort in an experiment conducted in high schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas in Queensland, Australia. All participating schools have a large representation of indigenous Australians, a population group that is frequently targeted by affirmative action. Our participants perform a simple real-effort task in a competitive setting. Those ranked in the top third receive a high piece-rate payment and all the others receive a low payment. We introduce affirmative action by providing the lowest (bottom third) performers with a positive handicap increasing their chances to achieve the high payment target. Our findings show that the policy increases effort of those that it aims to favour, without discouraging effort of those who are indirectly penalized by affirmative action.

This article introduces the Fogs Artie program that attempts to close the gap in educational attainment between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and provides an evaluation of its effectiveness. The program is of special interest as it uses in-kind incentives conditional on achievement of a specific target for academic grades, behaviour and attendance, coupled with information sessions on the importance of educational achievement. In 2012, all Indigenous students enrolled in 21 high schools in Queensland were invited to take part in the program. Using a differences-in-differences strategy, we find that the program improved behavioural and academic grades and reduced the number of unexplained absences for female students, but not for male students. In contrast, the program improved scores on a standardized national assessment test for male students. Moreover, we find that the program is only effective for students from intact families.