Beware of statistics -- Intrinsic Motivation and Performance: Jewish-American Soldiers in World War II

Intrinsic Motivation and Performance: Jewish-American Soldiers in World War II. Caio Waisman. Stanford Working Paper, June 2017, https://web.stanford.edu/~cwaisman/

Abstract: This paper assesses the potential influence of intrinsic motivation on individuals’ performance in the context of Jewish-American soldiers in World War II. In particular, it analyzes whether these soldiers performed differently when combating Germans as opposed to Japanese. Using medals, length of service, and medals per length of service as measures of performance and exploring a difference-in-differences empirical strategy, it finds that Jewish soldiers on average would have received fewer medals had they fought in Europe instead of the Pacific. This effect is driven by the length of service, as Jewish soldiers in Europe on average would have perished three months sooner than the ones in the Pacific. As a consequence, there is no differential effect on the number of medals received by month of service. These findings suggest that Jewish-American soldiers could have been excessively incentivized, which led them to more reckless behavior in combat and an earlier death.