At the core of economic theory is the monotonicity hypothesis: an agent’s effort, as a function of their skills, is either non-decreasing or non-increasing, but not both. To test this hypothesis, the authors of this article, “Effort is not a monotonic function of skills: Results from a global mobile experiment,” used data from Blues and Reds, a mobile app designed to conduct economic experiments that consists of a series of interactive puzzles.

The sample included 6,463 subjects from 141 countries. The authors measured subjects’ skills and effort levels using their response times. Then replicated the same test 22 times. Surprisingly, each time they found that the optimal effort is not a monotonic function of skills but rather has a U-shape contradicting the monotonicity hypothesis.

Read the full article at Science Direct.

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Konrad Grabiszewski, Alex Horenstein, Effort is not a monotonic function of skills: Results from a global mobile experiment,
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 176, 2020, Pages 634-652, ISSN 0167-2681, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2020.05.011.