Capital and Labor Effects in a Recall Task: More Evidence in Support of Camerer and Hogarth (1999)

This paper extends existing evidence on the interaction and relative productivity of cognitive effort and cognitive capital in an experimental environment. I focus on the impact of task-specific cognitive capital, which is central to the capital-labor argument of Camerer and Hogarth (1999) as well as related research in cognitive science and behavioral decision making. Using a memory recall task situated in an accounting setting, I show that the impact of taskspecific accounting knowledge on recall performance varies with the timing of the introduction of performance-contingent financial incentives. I further illustrate that subjects better endowed with task-specific accounting knowledge greater improve recall performance in response to the introduction of performance-contingent financial incentives. I draw implications for further research of the capital-labor-production framework and for compensation practices in experiments as well as work settings.