We explore the effect of identity salience on behaviour in a simple social interaction. Specifically, we compare ultimatum bargaining across three treatments: priming subjects with a shared identity, priming subjects with an identity distinct from those with whom they will interact, and priming...

Beliefs are a key motivator of individual behavior. As such, an understanding of how individuals’ beliefs develop is a prerequisite to understanding decision-making and behavior. While rational choice theory posits a Bayesian framework for belief formation, status construction theories argue...

<title>Abstract</title> The author uses a simple classroom experiment to develop the economic model of monopoly. As a pedagogical tool, the experiment introduces students to the nature of the monopoly problem and motivates them to think of the associated efficiency issues as a divergence between private...

Research in psychology indicates that individuals often make inferences regarding unknown individual qualities based on potentially irrelevant (but socially observable) information. This paper explores occupational choices when individuals receive imprecise signals regarding ability and use the...

We find an "inverse found money effect" in two-person public good experiments in which individuals earning their endowments contribute more and engage in "altruistic conditional cooperation" when they are matched with those whose endowment is provided by the experimenters.

We conduct experiments on earned wealth effects in dictator games. In addition to a standard treatment in which wealth was determined by the experimenter, we conduct treatments in which the dictator or the receiver earned the wealth used in the dictator game. In our baseline treatment, on...

A two-stage experiment was designed to examine spillover effects of a type of optimism/pessimism. We first exploit cognitive dissonance to induce optimism/pessimism by random assignment of high/low piece rates for performing a task. Subjects receiving the low piece rate are significantly more...