Paloma Ubeda

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Economía Aplicada Y Estadística, Faculty Member

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Paloma Ubeda joined the University of the Basque Country in May 2011. She did her PhD at the University of Valencia, where she worked as research assistant at LINEEX. Paloma has been also a Visitor Scholar at the Royall Holloway University of London, at Nuffield College University of Oxford and at Monash University. Her main research interests lie in the field of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. Her work focuses on Distributive Justice, Public Economics and Political Economics
Address: Dpto. Fundamentos del Análisis Económico II
Universidad del País Vasco
Av. Lehendakri Aguirre 83
48015 Bilbao, Spain

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liam anderson

Wright State University

César Colino

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

Angustias Hombrado

Fati Mustafasson

Paul Anderson

Liverpool John Moores University

Martín Portos

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Marc Montany Daufí

University of Sarajevo

Raul Tormos

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Yanina Welp

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva

Marc Sanjaume-Calvet

Universitat Pompeu Fabra y EUTM-UPC

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Papers by Paloma Ubeda

Moral consequences of becoming unemployed

by Abigail Barr, Luis Miller, and Paloma Ubeda

We test the conjecture that becoming unemployed erodes the extent to which a person acknowledges ... more We test the conjecture that becoming unemployed erodes the extent to which a person acknowledges earned entitlement. We use behavioral experiments to generate incentive-compatible measures of individuals' tendencies to acknowledge earned entitlement and incorporate these experiments in a two-stage study. In the first stage, participants' acknowledgment of earned entitlement was measured by engaging them in the behavioral experiments , and their individual employment status and other relevant socioeconomic characteristics were recorded. In the second stage, a year later, the process was repeated using the same instruments. The combination of the experimentally generated data and the longitudinal design allows us to investigate our conjecture using a difference-indifference approach, while ruling out the pure self-interest confound. We report evidence consistent with a large, negative effect of becoming unemployed on the acknowledgment of earned entitlement. economic experiments | longitudinal data | distributive justice | redistribution | unemployment

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The Relevance of Relative Position in Ultimatum Games

by Paloma Ubeda and Luis Miller

This paper investigates the effect of focal points and initial relative position in the outcome o... more

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Ethnicity and Trust: A Multifactorial Experiment

by Luis Miller, Henar Criado, Paloma Ubeda, and Francisco Herreros

This article reports the results of an online experiment conducted in two ethnically fragmented s... more This article reports the results of an online experiment conducted in two ethnically fragmented societies in Spain: the
Basque Country and Catalonia. It tests the effect of co-ethnicity on trust and reciprocity. Ethnicity was manipulated
in the experimental context using three ethnic attributes: ancestors’ origin, language and name. Additionally, the
article reports a comparison of general levels of trust in the two regions. No co-ethnicity effect on trust is found, but
there is significantly more reciprocal behaviour between Catalan speakers in Catalonia. Higher levels of trust and
reciprocity are found in the more homogeneous society of the Basque Country. The lack of co-ethnicity effect on
trust is especially significant given that the Basque Country has experienced decades of terrorism along ethnic lines.

The Consistency of Fairness Rules: An Experimental Study

Journal of Economic Psychology, Apr 1, 2014

In the last two decades, experimental papers on distributive justice have abounded. Two main resu... more In the last two decades, experimental papers on distributive justice have abounded. Two main results have been replicated. Firstly, there is a multiplicity of fairness rules. Secondly, fairness decisions differ depending on the context. This paper studies individual consistency in the use of fairness rules, as well as the structural factors that lead people to be inconsistent. We use a within-subject design, which allows us to compare individual behavior when the context changes. In line with the literature, we find a multiplicity of fairness rules. However, when we control for consistency, the set of fairness rules is considerably smaller. Only selfishness and strict egalitarianism seem to survive the stricter requirement of consistency. We observe that this result is mainly explained by a self-serving bias. Participants select the rule that is individually optimal in each situation.

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Are women more sensitive to the decision-making context?

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Jan 1, 2012

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Blind Justice: An experimental analysis of random punishment in team production

Journal of Economic Psychology, Jan 1, 2010

We study the effect of blind punishment in a team production experiment, in which subjects choose... more We study the effect of blind punishment in a team production experiment, in which subjects choose non-observable effort levels. In this setting, a random exclusion mechanism is introduced, linked to the normalized group performance (R, from 0 to 1). Every round, each subject is non-excluded from the collective profit with probability R (and with probability 1 À R gets no benefit from the group account). Punishment does not depend on the individual behavior, but the probability of being punished reflects collective performance. As the exclusion probability is computed at the group level, no individual information is needed to implement exclusion. However, the probabilistic punishment risks to be perceived by subjects as procedurally unfair, as all subjects are treated in an identical, non-equitable manner (justice is blind). Our results suggest that random exclusion promotes a significant increase in cooperation. The effect seems to be associated with hot behavioral responses to punishment. However, convergence to full contribution is not observed.

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The Relevance of Relative Position in Ultimatum Games

This paper investigates the effect of focal points and initial relative position in the outcome o... more

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Are women more sensitive to the decision-making context?

We conduct an experiment to assess gender differences across different economic contexts. Specifi... more We conduct an experiment to assess gender differences across different economic contexts. Specifically, we test whether women are more sensitive to the decision-making context in situations that demand the use of different fairness principles. We find that women adopt more often than men conditional fairness principles that require information about the context. Furthermore, while most men adopt only one decision principle, most women switch between multiple decision principles. These results complement and reinforce Croson and Gneezy’s organizing explanation of greater context sensitivity of women.► We experimentally study gender differences across different economic contexts. ► We use a within subject design to study whether participants switch between different fairness principles. ► We find that women adopt more often than men conditional fairness principle. ► While men adopt one fairness principle, women switch between different fairness principles. ► Women are more context-sensitive than men.

Drafts by Paloma Ubeda

The unintended consequences of political mobilization on trust: the case of the secessionist process in Catalonia

by Luis Miller and Paloma Ubeda

Journal of Conflict Resolution

There are conflicting theories and mixed empirical results concerning the relationship between et... more There are conflicting theories and mixed empirical results concerning the relationship between ethnic diversity and trust and cooperation. In this article, we argue that these mixed empirical results might be driven by contextual conditions. We conjecture that political competition could strengthen ethnic saliency and, in turn, salient ethnic identities can activate or intensify in-group trust and depress trust in members of other ethnic groups. We test this conjecture using the move towards secession in Catalonia, Spain. We conduct trust experiments across ethnic lines in Catalonia before and during the secessionist process. After three years of pro-independence mobilisation in Catalonia, one of the ethnic groups, Spanish-speakers living in Catalonia, has indeed increased its in-group trust. This result is robust after a set of individual-level variables are controlled for, but no equivalent result is found in a comparable region: the Basque Country.

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Moral consequences of becoming unemployed

by Abigail Barr, Luis Miller, and Paloma Ubeda

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The Relevance of Relative Position in Ultimatum Games

by Paloma Ubeda and Luis Miller

This paper investigates the effect of focal points and initial relative position in the outcome o... more

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Ethnicity and Trust: A Multifactorial Experiment

by Luis Miller, Henar Criado, Paloma Ubeda, and Francisco Herreros