Working Papers

The WNE Working Papers series has been published by the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw since 2008.

The WNE Working Papers series provides a fast, open channel for disseminating research conducted at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw. The papers hosted here are working versions (pre-prints) and may evolve as authors refine their analyses, incorporate feedback, or progress through formal peer-review. What you read is the current version released by the authors, timestamped and assigned DOI/ISSN identifiers to ensure precise citation and version tracking. Copyright remains with the authors, who may, at any time, upload a revised file or add a note directing readers to a later, peer-reviewed publication.

The Working Papers series accepts articles by research employees of the Faculty and publications from conferences organised at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw. Articles should be original research papers which have not been previously published, on the subject of economics.

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Number of Results 5

WP(37/2026)531. Do non-financial incentives work better for women? Two classroom experiments on calibration

Authors: Amirkhanyan Hayk
This paper reports the results of two experiments exploring the effects of monetary and non-monetary incentives on overconfidence and underconfidence. It additionally explores the moderating effects of gender. The participants of both experiments are…

WP531. Do non-financial incentives work better for women? Two classroom experiments on calibration

This paper reports the results of two experiments exploring the effects of monetary and non-monetary incentives on overconfidence and underconfidence. It additionally explores the moderating effects of gender. The participants of both experiments are university students taking their academic tests. Right before the tests, they predict weather their score will be higher or lower than the average in their class group. Overplacement is defined as expecting a better-than-average score but actually getting a below-average score. Similarly, underplacement occurs when a subject expects a below-average score but ends up above the average. Half of the subjects are incentivized: some receive money and others a handmade gift conditional on predicting correctly. Experiment 1 is conducted weekly for nine tests and involves students of one course. Experiment 2 involves students of four different courses, and the grade predictions are made on the final exam only. While Experiment 2 shows no significant results, the main finding from Experiment 1 is that the handmade gift reduces the likelihood of overplacement and underplacement for women, making them significantly better calibrated than men. Experiment 1 also shows that overplacement, but not underplacement, is more likely when the stakes are high (midterm and final tests compared to the weekly quizzes). Finally, there is limited support for the Dunning-Kruger effect.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.37.531
Amirkhanyan Hayk
overconfidence overplacement underconfidence non-monetary incentives gender differences Dunning-Kruger effect

WP(6/2022)382. Calibration and incentives: evidence from contract bridge

Authors: Krawczyk Michał, Wilamowski Maciej
We elicit probability forecasts from amateur contract bridge players. At the end of the auction of each deal in a tournament, the players were asked to make a guess (unobservable to others) about the probability with which the contract will be made. …

WP382. Calibration and incentives: evidence from contract bridge

We elicit probability forecasts from amateur contract bridge players. At the end of the auction of each deal in a tournament, the players were asked to make a guess (unobservable to others) about the probability with which the contract will be made. We observe them to be overall poorly calibrated. We also find that incentivizing correct forecasts makes no difference.


Krawczyk Michał, Wilamowski Maciej
overconfidence forecast incentives gender differences bridge into professions

WP(3/2022)379. Is running a marathon like running a business? Identifying occupational differences in overconfidence using long-distance running data

Authors: Amirkhanyan Hayk, Krawczyk Michał, Wilamowski Maciej
It is often claimed that certain career choices, notably running a business, are associated with excessive confidence in own capabilities. Such a link could partly explain e.g., the surprisingly high number of unsuccessful start-ups. We verify these …

WP379. Is running a marathon like running a business? Identifying occupational differences in overconfidence using long-distance running data

It is often claimed that certain career choices, notably running a business, are associated with excessive confidence in own capabilities. Such a link could partly explain e.g., the surprisingly high number of unsuccessful start-ups. We verify these claims in a sample of marathon runners. We take starting too fast and then slowing down in a marathon race as a proxy for overconfidence. In a sample of over 50 thousand runners, we match marathon pacing data with job titles that are partly reported by the runners themselves and partly identified by us (using runners’ names, years of birth, and places of residence to find their personal web sites, social media profiles etc., whenever possible). We observe that job categories have a significant impact on slowing down (as a proxy for overconfidence), also when we control for observable demographic factors (such as age, gender, place of residence). In particular, entrepreneurs tend to be more overconfident than the general population.


Amirkhanyan Hayk, Krawczyk Michał, Wilamowski Maciej
overconfidence slowdown occupational differences gender differences selection into professions

WP(1/2015)149. Are we all overconfident in the long run? Evidence from one million marathon participants

Authors: Krawczyk Michał, Wilamowski Maciej
In this project we sought to contribute to extant literature on overconfidence by identifying it in a large, heterogeneous sample making familiar, repeated choices in a natural environment which provides direct feedback. In Study 1 we elicited predic…

WP149. Are we all overconfident in the long run? Evidence from one million marathon participants

In this project we sought to contribute to extant literature on overconfidence by identifying it in a large, heterogeneous sample making familiar, repeated choices in a natural environment which provides direct feedback. In Study 1 we elicited predictions of own finishing time among participants of the 2012 Warsaw Marathon. Their prediction errors turned out to be very highly correlated with the change in pace over the course of the run. In Study 2 we thus took this change in pace as a proxy for self-confidence and used existing field data of around one million participants. Both studies indicate that males as well as youngest and oldest participants tend to be more confident. In Study 2 we are also able to investigate national and cultural dimensions, confirming previously reported findings of relative overconfidence in Asians and providing some novel results, i.a. that relatively conservative societies tend to be more self-confident.


Krawczyk Michał, Wilamowski Maciej
overconfidence performance forecasts gender differences age effects national culture

WP(15/2011)55. Overconfident for real? Proper scoring for confidence intervals.

Authors: Krawczyk Michał
Studies show that people tend to provide overly narrow confidence intervals for unknown values. Such a form of overconfidence would have an important impact on financial markets, among other domains, leading i.a. to excessive trading. The present stu…

WP55. Overconfident for real? Proper scoring for confidence intervals.

Studies show that people tend to provide overly narrow confidence intervals for unknown values. Such a form of overconfidence would have an important impact on financial markets, among other domains, leading i.a. to excessive trading. The present study is one of the very few that try to incentivize reporting correct confidence intervals. To this end, a reward scheme is proposed, based on a combination of asymmetric loss functions minimized by appropriate quantiles of a probability distribution. In the experiment I find that incentivized subjects provide wider confidence intervals, obtaining a higher hit rate than the control group. The effect is stronger than that of feedback and explicit warning. These findings suggest that the overly narrow confidence intervals reported elsewhere are partly due to an insufficient mental effort that subjects exert and that they can be induced to do so by the proposed incentive scheme.


Krawczyk Michał
overconfidence calibration confidence intervals proper scoring rules
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