Social‐benefits stigma and subsequent competitiveness.

We conduct a laboratory experiment to explore how benefit‐eligibility stigma drives subsequent decisions to enter competition. We induce a stigma associated with a low‐status benefit and then introduce "plausible deniability" to reduce this stigma by expanding benefit eligibility to a middle‐status...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Economic Inquiry Vol. 63; no. 3; pp. 903 - 926
Autores principales: Valdez Gonzalez, Natalia I., Brown, Alexander L., Palma, Marco A.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell Jul2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:We conduct a laboratory experiment to explore how benefit‐eligibility stigma drives subsequent decisions to enter competition. We induce a stigma associated with a low‐status benefit and then introduce "plausible deniability" to reduce this stigma by expanding benefit eligibility to a middle‐status group. When newly‐eligible individuals qualify for the benefit, their rate of entry into a subsequent and unrelated tournament is reduced by 17–20 percentage points compared to the treatment in which they do not qualify. A potential interpretation of our results would suggest expanding for certain government assistance programs may produce unintended consequences for the newly eligible.